Posted by William Heinselman on
If you’ve noticed recent spikes in your water bill, water performance issues, and spotting on your lawn, there’s a solid chance your underground pipes have been damaged in some way. Gradual pipe collapse or deterioration is common for dated plumbing systems made of Orangeburg pipe, copper, or clay.
What if the pipes under your property are fairly new? How is pipe damage possible for pipes installed within the last decade or two? Pipes can fall apart over more than just old age. If you’re experiencing pipe failure in otherwise healthy plumbing systems, there’s a good chance your pipes have succumbed to the elements.
In this blog, we’ll break down the various environmental factors that can put your underground pipe systems in trouble, as well as the innovative solutions for dealing with these damages.
Environmental Risks to Your Pipe System
Before you can start looking into your pipe repair options, you’ll have to identify the environmental cause of your pipes. Major environmental stressors, such as earthquakes and tremors, cause the most severe pipe damage for properties along geological fault lines. Sudden environmental changes are often the final straw for pipe systems affected by other factors, such as age or corrosion.
Environmental stress on critical pipe joints can cause cracking and severe fractures, which require immediate pipe repair to limit their effects. Factors like these, when compounded with high surface pressure, human error, or poor pipe structure, can easily result in full collapse.
Also potentially hazardous to pipe strength are sudden drops in temperature during winter months. When water freezes within underground pipe systems, it builds pressure exponentially, which may result in burst pipes. This is a high risk factor that affects pipes of any size and material, including:
- Clay pipes
- Cast iron pipes
- Orangeburg pipes
- Copper pipes
- Cement pipes
- PVC/plastic pipes
- Pipe joints and laterals
Another environmental factor that can put the integrity of your pipes in jeopardy is intrusion by underground plants, animals, and digging.
When dealing with these problems, it’s important to not only fix your damaged, infiltrated pipes, but also find resolutions to the cause. Research ways you may be able to prevent pipe damage from happening again, such as minor landscaping (moving plants with intrusive roots elsewhere) or animal removal services.
Non-Invasive Solutions for All Pipe Damages
No matter the cause of your property’s pipe damage, there are solutions available that can restore your pipes in record time, and at minimal cost. Whether your damages are contained to one critical pipe segment or spread throughout your entire sewage system, efficient restorations are possible with trenchless technologies.
Dig-free, epoxy-resin pipe lining solutions can cure-in-place within damaged pipe sections and restore plumbing function in as little as two hours. The main trenchless applications technicians use to restore pipes are:
- Pipe and lateral lining: the standard trenchless technique, used broadly to restore damaged water pipes and laterals internally
- Sectional point repair: used primarily for contained, isolated pipe damage, such as single-point intrusions and minor cracking
- Manhole-to-manhole lining: the trenchless solution for severely damaged sewer lines, which can be completed entirely through existing manhole entry points.
Even for pipes damaged too severely for repairs to be practical, trenchless technicians can install entirely new pipe segments without physically digging out your existing pipe in a technique known as pipe bursting. Using steel, cone-shaped bursting heads to fragment non-salvageable pipe, trenchless pros clear the way for new pipe segments, which are attached to the bursting head for a seamless, one-step replacement process.
If your pipes have been extensively damaged by the elements, changes in temperature, or intrusions, don’t panic. Trenchless technologies can be used to repair or replace your damaged pipes with ease, in an entirely green process that costs little in both time and money.
Don’t wait to find out what trenchless solutions are best suited for your broken pipes. For Sacramento pipe damage, contact the pros at Express Sewer & Drain. These trenchless experts in your area offer the most effective, affordable trenchless solutions to meet your needs.
