Plumbing – Sewer line repair – most cost effective method

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Background

So I recently had a bad clog to which I had a plumbing company come out and clear out. A part of the process is looking at the finished job on their sewer camera. Our sewer line is made from clay pipes and our clog was due to many roots penetrating in. The clay pipes do have quite a bit of "stress cracks" and two spots that appear to actually be holes.

Question

So now it is all cleared out, I am trying to think of the best way to prevent anything from happening again like this. Best being qualified as least expensive, but lasting for the rest of my life. I plan on owning this house for the rest of my life so would like to do it the correct way. As far as I know, my options are:

  1. Pour a product like RootX down the drain once a year to kill all roots that come in the pipe
  2. Hire a company to replace the pipe with PVC.
  3. Install a pipe liner, where they make an "epoxy pipe" inside the existing one.

So obviously I would like to not spend as much money as I can help. Will pouring RootX down the drain once a year be a long term solution or will the clay pipes eventually have other issues?

I only recently heard about lining a pipe from the inside which seems ideal for clay pipes like mine. They are rated for 50 years so would I have to replace the pipes anyways after 50 years?

Best Answer

Pipe replacement is the most costly, but it's also the most permanent. There are (at least) two ways to replace the pipe, and you may not have considered the second method I'll mention.

The traditional method is an open trench stretching the full length from the house to the sewer main, probably somewhere in the middle of the street. This is both slow and high-impact to the surrounding landscape.

An alternative method, less commonly known to homeowners, is pipe bursting. This often requires access holes be dug only at the two ends of the pipe. A steel cable is fed through the pipe. A splitting wedge and replacement pipe, often semi-flexible HDPE tube, are attached to one end of the steel cable. A hydraulic machine pulls the other end of the cable. The splitting wedge breaks the original pipe into pieces, forcing them outward and reaming the space large enough for the new HDPE pipe to follow through. The replacement pipe can even have larger diameter than the original if needed.

Pipe bursting gets the job done with much less impact to the surroundings and often in less time. Cost compared to the other options will vary by market, but it's worth at least evaluating as one of your options.

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