Most sewer lines are well below ground so as to create an incline from your house or business to the main municipal sewer line beneath the street. If you have ever seen your municipality dig up a street sewer line, you know it’s a big affair with backhoes, earth movers, lots of labor, and there’s usually a large patch in the street when the job is done. Imagine digging a trench the full length of your sewer line, from structure to street, through your driveway, your hard-earned landscaping, or part of your foundation. Imagine the patching that it requires, not to mention the inconvenience and expense of repair. It can be an ordeal. 

Most homeowners and business owners prefer to keep their yards, driveways, sidewalks, and foundations intact, and undisturbed. That’s where trenchless repair solutions, such as pipe lining and pipe bursting come in. 

Chris Bergeron of Drain Pro SC was at the very forefront of introducing pipe lining to the midlands area. He embraced the new technology early on and has put in thousands of man hours mastering the process. Drains and sewer lines have been his sole focus, not general plumbing, not other home services, simply sewer and drain lines, with an emphasis on trenchless repair.

Trenchless repair is the process of creating a new pipe either within the old existing damaged pipe -or- within the space the old pipe occupied without breaking ground, safely and dependably. 

Pipe lining = new pipe within existing pipe

Pipe bursting = new pipe in place of old pipe

In both cases all the work is done below ground without a trench. That’s Drain Pro’s forte and focus. It’s what they live for.

Pipe Lining

You know how your shirt sleeve turns inside out when you take your shirt off? We have a technical term for that. We call it inversion.

A pipe liner is like a giant sleeve with an extreme industrial epoxy inside of it. When this sleeve is inverted into the pipe, propelled by intense air pressure, the epoxy follows with the outside of the sleeve as it inverts into the old pipe. The air pressure continues ballooning the sleeve as the epoxy fuses the outside of the liner to the inside of the existing pipe. This forms the new pipe.

​The epoxy hardens within several hours depending on the ambient air temperature. There are times when Drain Pro SC will introduce pressurized steam into the line to super heat the liner for a rapid cure. Once cured, the liner is ready for action, all without digging a trench.

​The new liner is generally as tough as the original lines, with the added bonus of having the old pipe shielding it. The liner is so tough that it is warrantied for 50 years by the manufacturer. The new line is only marginally smaller than the old line, and since the interior is slick by design, the rate of flow is not compromised.

Pipe Bursting

Pipe bursting is a method of splitting your old sewer line open just enough to be able to pull a new line through in it’s place. The method is another form of trenchless sewer line replacement. However, some digging is required at both ends of the sewer line in order to drag the new line through. This is called launching and receiving pits.

Here’s how it works. A new line is attached, much like a tail, to a wedge-shaped expander head. The narrow end of the wedged head is inserted into the old pipe, then literally dragged through the old pipeline using an industrial high torque winch by way of an industrial cable. This forces the old pipe to ‘burst’ open allowing the new pipe to immediately displace it within the existing channel.

The earth between the ends of the sewer line remains relatively undisturbed. The new pipe is then plumbed into the entry and exit points of the previous sewer line.

Chris can help evaluate whether pipe lining or pipe bursting is a better choice for your situation. He is highly trained in all types of sewer line replacement, and can easily discern the best course of action for you.

803-56-DRAIN

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