Pipe bursting for side sewer repair?

[HardDrive]

I'm getting estimates for some side sewer repairs. Side sewer is functional, but there are some issues. We are potentially looking at selling the house, and everyone around here gets the side sewer scoped. I would rather deal with it now rather than have it come up when we are in contract with someone.

House is on a steep hillside. There are only 2 breaks in the pipe, but one of them is pretty deep.

I just had a guy come out, and offer to redo the whole line using pipe bursting. He said the cost would be a bit more than doing the repairs, but not by much.

Any experience with this?

[juanbenae]

yes, i work for a public agency and we do bursting of both old mains and lat lines regularly. very slick. excavate at the main or clean out, and again at the house & pull fused pipe back in by backhoe mounted winch in most cases. cheaper than a full open cut, but not by much usually. if it's a good slope it's better yet for bursting as on some of our flatter lines have left sags that had to be reexcavated and the pipe reset to a more favorable grade. with the heavy winches we've used for mainline pulls we upsize from 6 to 8" and can pull up to 500' in a single effort. the bigger, longer pulls require a pneumatic bursting head that hammers the clay pipe shattering it as the winch coaxes the new fused joint PVC pipe along..

you might also consider looking into spot repairs and a reline. thats accomplished by blowing a resin saturated fiberglass sock into the pipe and it is then cured by hot steam. we've also contracted for many of thoise restorations. did one last year that was a 30" sanitary line. the deverting of that line was the hardest part.

[nota]

retired water and sewer dept land surveyor

we lined old sewer mains but didnot break up the pipes aka ''bursting''
I had to google it so I never have seen it done
I fail to see a big gain in busting up the pipe vs just shoving a inner liner inside the existing pipe that should be quicker and cheaper if strait
sure was eazyer then digging up streets

south fla has very high ground water and sewer mains are center of the street mostly
so tree roots are less of a problem here in main vs smaller service laterals
and the service laterals are the customers problem not ours

esp if selling go for a minimum expense fix
as a steep run should not have problems

[juanbenae]

bursting head being mounted to fused pipe



pipe being fused with fusing machine

[NY65912]

They should be using XHCI or DIP like we have to do in NYC. Real plumbers work iron and lead