OT/Trenchless sewer pipe lining questions

I'm helping a friend resolve a cast iron sewer line problem under a concrete slab. One company has quoted $24,000 and another company $30,000 to epoxy/fiberglass line 125 feet of 4 inch pipe.

I've never worked with this stuff before. Both bidders seem to think it's a two day job for two men. I roughly calculated it will take 15-20 gallons of epoxy, plus the fiberglass sleeve.

High pressure water and a rotorooter-type machine is used to pre-clean the old pipe.

Allowing $4,000 for material, $1,600 labor, $1,000 wear and tear on the support equipment and incidental stuff...$24,000???????? Am I in the wrong business?????

Was wondering if any of you have experience with this type product, and what are your thoughts on the pricing?

There are several ways to repair a sewer line. This happens to be one of the most expensive. It's viable if you can't disturb what's on top of it, like a complex machine or structural parts of your building. In part the price is based on what it would cost you to do it other ways. Often the equipment and technique are patented and the contractor must pay a fee to use it along with expensive equipment and training. As an aside, I'm moving my construction company towards utility work like this because I am "in the wrong business". I would ask "why did the line fail and will this technique prevent that failure from progressing?". If the pipe is moving then the repair is likely to fail as well. If you can dig it up it may be cheaper and more effective in the long run. Pipe bursting is another alternative that may fit here. Keep looking.

I had 30 feet burst lined for 8000.
The machinery was pretty special.
They dug two holes for the process.

Machinery, training, the epoxy ain't cheap, permitting, a backhoe for the terminus and possibly the lead, permits, a street cut, repave?
It is a lot of money, but it's not without a lot of overhead.

Can you not camera survey the drain, identify where the problem is and dig a targeted hole down to make a conventional repair?

I was at a construction equipment show last year and they had a couple of vendors with that type of equipment. The one I got to talk to for a while blew a sleeve in the hole, and then cured the sleeve with UV light. The pipe had been mapped beforehand, and then a crawler went in and waterjetted any necessary connections in the sleeve.

The cost per pound really impressed me. IIRC this was about a 40# bug, with a price tag around $100,000. I was thinking "That isn't bad money"! For mechanical items, I think it was the most expensive equipment there in terms of $/lb.

Guys, thanks for all the input.

A relative of mine invites bidding on relines and bursting for a city... always get at least two prices. ... and watch out for gotchas like : "oh! We missed that branch so will have to charge as extra."
Some of the mistakes are things like missing a branch and not opening it.... sewer backup into house. Cutting into branches that were long abandoned. From the contractor's view he has to have some wiggle room for when a job goes south on him.

I'm not sure if it will do 125 feet, but there is also the flexible replacement line that "replaces" the existing line as the cutter cuts a new hole as it is being pulled thru.
It may only work with clay/cement pipe but I'd look into it

makes cutting the slab look relatively inexpensive

I asked my daughter who works as a job scheduler for a local plumbing company in DE.
How much to burst and line 125' of 4' cast iron?
Could be as low as $7-9000 if an easy access and no branch lines
travel to NM ...........$$$$$$
Get more quotes
Mike

The alley out behind my house got the epoxy (or whatever it is) impregnated sock reliner did to it.

They waterjetted the entire block from one end to the other.... cleaned it all out. Mapped the existing inlets from homes, then went to work lining.

I didn't get to watch them get it from one end of the block to the other, but got there when they were about done.

To cure it... they had a big box truck with a package boiler in the back. They fired it up and somehow hooked one end of that "sock" liner to the outlet of the boiler... then blew steam thru the liner that lay in the sewer below ground. The other end of the liner was laying on top of the street at the other end.

The steam pressure expanded the sock to fill up the existing clay tile.... and hardened it.

They got down in the hole and cut off the excess sock... then put their robot camera down in the new sewer... it had an auxiliary head on it that contained a drill with what looked like a hole saw chucked up in it.

They had GPS located each individual sewer inlet from the homes... the thing traveled down the pipe, would lean over and cut out the hole at the precise location.. then move down to the next one.

This was all done live and viewed up in the truck by the operator. Didn't take any time at all. When finished, that liner is tough as nails.... and pretty thick it seemed like.

They've been doing that all over around here, for the regular sewer. If a 4" line is tens of thousands for a short piece, I hate to think what it would cost for a quarter mile of 16" or so pipe, which is what they are doing around here. It looks like it would be in the half million range. Pretty good for one day's work, which is all it took out near work.

I was thinking of having it done to my drain, since its all clay, and we get a lot of roots in it. But for that sort of money, I can pay for a heck of a lot of the most expensive roto-rooter type folks. No way am I paying 50 to 100 grand for a liner.

It can't be that expensive, it's about $2000 for 10 feet of pipe excavated and replaced, with concrete re-poured. I know, I had that done a few years ago. But I don't really want to have that done all the way out, even though it would be only about another 12 grand.

I'd quote the alternative for sure, even if it meant relocating the line away from the slab (if possible within reason, etc). Saw the slab, drill the sides for "keys", excavate, new PVC, close it all up and repour. Its just me, an amateur for sure, but I like the challenge of jobs, I could do a lot of digging with a rental mini trackhoe for $24k. Spend the money on a concrete cutting firm.

FYI rolling your own hydraulic bursting head, hiring something with a big enough winch to drag it and a plastic pipe behind it would leave you with a lot of spare money for that $24K

Me and a friend done a straight 100' run several years ago (straight run for irrigation pipe work under the public high way) original was a ceramic pipe that had started to come disconnected with soil movement. He used it to thread a line through for irrigation purposes, but was haveing a ever harder time each year getting it through there. The bursting head was nothing more than a couple of dumpy hydraulic cylinders + some real simple steel work. Power was a large pressure washer (river close by - environment agency) would go ape shit if there was a oil leak. Winch was a pto affair of the back of one of his large tractors tractors. Liner was just a big coil of 4" MDPE plastic pipe. Simply winch it in 1', pull the pressure washer lance trigger for about 20 secounds, watching the pressure gauge climb, then fall as the old pipe ruptured the rapidly rise as the cylinders hit the stops. Release the trigger and vent the pressure till water stopped flowing and then drag it in another 1' All told it took about 20 hours. Admittedly this was just a straight though pipe and did not have any sewerage to deal with, but the idea is much the same.

Hardest part we had was getting the pressure washer line fed through the plastic pipe as we did not want to run it in the old pipe with the powerful winch cable. Getting the winch cable through was a ass too. Ended up having to cut the end clean off and weld a chain link too it to have something small enough to be able to get it through the collapsed sections. Then re-splice it in the field the other side to connect it to our burster (done by his granddad who last spliced a tow cable in the north Atlantic towards the end of WW2!!

Based on how easy it ruptured, if i was to do it over, i would just setup something more akin to a strand jack on the end of the pipe and pull a larger steel tapered cone through, the clay pipe burst at a pretty low pressure, a shallow cone and a few tons of pull would have easily have just done it with out the complicated hydraulics. Had it been cast iron though im not sure. That probably would need some kinda burst.

SLG said:

I'm helping a friend resolve a cast iron sewer line problem under a concrete slab. One company has quoted $24,000 and another company $30,000 to epoxy/fiberglass line 125 feet of 4 inch pipe.

I've never worked with this stuff before. Both bidders seem to think it's a two day job for two men. I roughly calculated it will take 15-20 gallons of epoxy, plus the fiberglass sleeve.

High pressure water and a rotorooter-type machine is used to pre-clean the old pipe.

Allowing $4,000 for material, $1,600 labor, $1,000 wear and tear on the support equipment and incidental stuff...$24,000???????? Am I in the wrong business?????

Was wondering if any of you have experience with this type product, and what are your thoughts on the pricing?

Click to expand...

Add in substantial cost for insurance also, especially if the work is on a commercial building - and make sure whomever he uses has proof of insurance.

Cutting thru the slab for repairs could be complicated out west, if the OP's slab is "post-tensioned". Steel cables within slab are tightened after the concrete sets up. Accidentally cutting thru one of them could compromise the structure. They seem like they'd be pretty easy to map out, though.

It looks like infrastructure repair without disturbing things topside is poised to be really big business (and probably has been for awhile). Lots of 100 year old stuff out there, with 100 year old stuff on top of it.

In the explanation above, the GPS location of tributary plumbing seems like a neat trick. Might have future clog potential if the edges are rough, though.

Chip

Thanks again everyone!

We are looking at a number of issues on this project.

The existing sewer line appears to be off grade a little, so a liner won't resolve that problem.
There are a number of lateral feed lines that need work.
Surface demolition is going to wreck a lot of floor tile, much of it marble.
Existing sewer line is 30" below finished floor, as it runs underneath HVAC ducting (all of which is concrete encased) - lots of dirt to dig.
There's a floor drain in the furnace closet, which requires the furnace to be R&R'd, along with the water heater and the water softener.
Two tile showers that will be damaged.
No feasible way to run new pipe outside the structure - lot's of asphalt paving and concrete curbing. Would also require a new septic system.
Pipe bursting is not a good option for any part of this.

The list goes on and on - and all of it expensive!

@Chip Fortunately, this is not a post-tension slab, so we don't have to worry about that.

That kinda only leaves directional drilling, thats not going to be easy or cheap with that much stuff to avoid.

I directional drill for a living, I guess I am working a bit cheap on projects like this. We have bored to grade in 4" #40 PVC pipe under several buildings. Locally we are getting 25 to 30 bucks a foot. For the bore. There is a couple of problems we have is room out side to set up and interference inside the building to track our transmitter. We cut an 18" hole in the concrete to come in to and tie into old work.

What's this "bursting" deal? never heard of it.

As far as I know they just clean the pipe, and then install the liner by blowing it through, later cutting any needed side holes. A one day job.

Doing the dig and pipe replacement was a 2 or 3 day job, and it was only $2k, so what's the big expense here?