We clean and inspect drains and sewers in Wheat Ridge — cabling, hydro jetting, carbide milling for cast iron, root cutting, and NASSCO certified camera inspection with a written report. Wheat Ridge is inside our no-charge area, so there is no trip charge here.
We don’t do repairs and we don’t dig. That’s the reason we can tell you a line doesn’t need replacing — we have no replacement to sell you. It’s also why, on the rare occasion we say a pipe really is finished, it’s worth listening to.
“There are cracks in the line”
This is the finding that frightens Wheat Ridge homeowners most, and most of the time it is describing something normal.
One line we scoped here runs cast iron out of the basement for thirty feet and then clay the rest of the way to the city tap at eighty-one. On the way down the camera logged roots coming in at six separate clay joints, a circumferential crack at 48.3 feet, and two more cracks — one circumferential, one longitudinal — at 53.9 and 56.5.
Three cracks and six root joints. The conclusion on that report reads that the mainline is clean and serviceable, and that no problems were found.
The reason is in the report too. Those cracks are typical of vitrified clay. There is no separation and no displacement — the pipe is still round, still holding its shape, still carrying everything it is asked to carry — and that kind of crack is usually in the glazed surface of the pipe rather than through its wall. Clay is kiln-fired for about fifty hours into something closer to ceramic than to pipe, and a glaze that has crazed is not a pipe that has broken.
What that line needs is a cleaning once a year to take the fresh root growth back, and a camera down it to watch the cracks. Not a new sewer. Where the line actually falls between a crack and a failure is worth reading if your report uses the word.
And then there’s concrete
Most of this site is spent explaining why an alarming finding usually isn’t one. Roots in clay are normal. Bellies are normal. A black channel along the bottom of old cast iron is what old cast iron looks like.
Concrete sewer pipe is where we say the opposite, and we want to be straight about it.
We find it periodically — it turns up in Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Littleton, Arvada, Thornton and Denver among others, usually as one stretch in the middle of a line that is otherwise cast iron and clay. And going back through our own inspection reports, about half the concrete lines we have scoped had something genuinely wrong with them. For every other material in those reports, the overwhelming majority come back clean.
It is always the same thing that has gone wrong, too. The bottom.
Why the bottom of a concrete pipe goes
Concrete is an excellent storm drain. The trouble with using it for sanitary sewage is chemistry: sewage gives off hydrogen sulfide gas, and hydrogen sulfide in a damp pipe makes a very dilute sulphuric acid. Dilute or not, it is corrosive to concrete.
And the flow sits on the floor of the pipe, so that is where the acid works. The bottom wears, then washes out, then holes through, and in the worst ones we have filmed the concrete is gone entirely and only the aggregate — the stones in the mix — is left holding the shape.
Standing water makes it faster, which is the one case where a flat line genuinely matters. A belly in clay is a maintenance item. A belly in concrete or cast iron is sitting water against a surface that water is eating.
So if your report says concrete and says the bottom is worn, that is not the same sentence as “the cast iron is black on the bottom.” It is worth a careful look, and it is worth doing before it becomes a hole.
What that looks like on a real Wheat Ridge line
A house here with no sewer clean-out at all — we went in through a patch in the crawl space opening — and a hundred and forty-three feet of line to the city tap, which is about as long as metro sewers get.
Concrete from the crawl space, clay from twelve feet, and a longitudinal crack along the bottom of the concrete between 6.4 and 10 feet with the pipe floor wearing away under it. Roots through the clay joints further down, which is the ordinary part.
What went in the report was not a footage number. It was this: the defect is under the back patio, three feet down. We locate the thing and say where it is on the ground, because a repair crew digs to a mark, not to a number off a camera reel. The reason a footage figure is close rather than exact is worth understanding before anyone breaks concrete.
And the recommendation was cured-in-place lining — a new pipe formed inside the old one, no trench, nothing dug up in a back garden. We don’t do lining and we don’t earn a penny from it. Here’s what each repair method actually involves, from a company that performs none of them.
If you’re holding a report
Send it to us before you agree to anything. Call Cam on (720) 435-7315 or email ourdrainandsewer@gmail.com with the report and the video link — she reads every report and watches every video before anything gets quoted.
We will tell you which of the findings in it are ordinary and which one isn’t, and on a Wheat Ridge line there is usually only one that is.
What it costs in Wheat Ridge
- Mainline sewer cleaning from an accessible clean-out, up to an hour, 150 feet of cable — $225
- Clogged drains and sinks, up to an hour, 75 feet of cable — $175
- NASSCO certified camera inspection, video and written report — $175
- Camera with locate, video — $145
- Carbide flex-shaft milling and cast iron restoration, up to two hours — $475
- Trailer-mounted hydro jetting, up to two hours, 500 feet of hose — $475
- No trip charge in Wheat Ridge.
Estimates are free and the full price list is published. We book about a week out, and by Friday most of the following week is usually gone.