We don’t do any of this. We don’t dig, we don’t line pipe, we don’t burst pipe, and we don’t replace sewer lines. There is nothing on this page we can sell you.
Which is the reason it’s worth reading. Nearly everything written about sewer repair is written by somebody who performs one of these methods and would like you to pick theirs. Here is what the four of them actually involve, what each one fixes, and — the part that usually goes missing — what each one doesn’t.
What decides which repair you’re allowed to have
Repairs are priced by how much of the pipe has to be dealt with. So the single biggest factor in what you end up paying is how precisely your problem has been described.
“Cracks along the line, recommend replacement” and “one cracked joint at thirty-two feet, the rest of the run sound” can be the same pipe. The first sentence costs you a sewer line. The second costs you a patch. What separates them isn’t the pipe — it’s how carefully somebody looked, and whether they cleaned it first.
That is the whole argument for getting a clean, careful inspection before you agree to anything. What your inspection report actually means.
Spot repair — also called point repair, or a sectional liner
The smallest of the four. A short resin-saturated sleeve is positioned over one defective section, pressed out against the pipe wall and cured in place. No trench, and nothing done to the rest of the line.
It fits when the line is sound apart from one or two local problems — a single cracked joint, one hole, roots coming in at one place. It stops fitting when the inspection shows the same failure repeating along the run, because patching five spots one at a time is no longer cheaper than lining the whole thing. It also needs access on the right side of the defect, and it does nothing about an offset, a collapse or a grade problem.
This is the repair most worth knowing exists, because it is the one a vague diagnosis takes away from you.
CIPP lining — a new pipe inside the old one
CIPP stands for cured-in-place pipe. A resin-impregnated tube is drawn or inflated through the full length of the existing pipe and cured — with hot water, steam, or ultraviolet light — until it sets into a jointless pipe inside your pipe. Branch connections are then reopened from the inside with a robotic cutter.
What it fixes: cracks, holes, corroded cast iron, and roots coming in at joints — because afterwards there are no joints for roots to come in at. For cast iron running under a basement floor it is usually the alternative to breaking up the floor.
Three things about it that rarely get said out loud:
- It doesn’t change the shape of your pipe. A liner follows the pipe it’s installed in. If your line has a belly, the lined line has the same belly.
- The pipe has to be properly clean first. Resin will not bond to grease or scale, and anything protruding into the line has to come out before the liner goes in. A pipe lined over its own buildup is a liner installed badly.
- It doesn’t mean the line never needs cleaning again. Lining gets sold as maintenance-free and it isn’t. A lined line cleans like any other line — cable, jetter or flex-shaft mill all work in one. If you’re being told you’ll never have to touch it again, that isn’t how pipe works.
Pipe bursting — pulling a new pipe through the old one
A cone-shaped head is pulled through the existing pipe, fracturing it outward into the surrounding soil and towing the new pipe in behind it. On a house line that means one opening at each end — typically one in the basement floor and one outside the foundation — instead of a trench along the whole run.
It works on pipe that breaks: clay, cast iron, concrete, asbestos cement, and the tar-impregnated fibre pipe sold as Orangeburg. That last one is worth knowing, because Orangeburg is the one material where everybody in this trade agrees cleaning is not the answer.
What stops it:
- Another utility sharing the trench. If a gas or water service runs alongside your sewer with little separation, bursting is usually off the table — industry guidance is to keep neighbouring pipes at least two pipe diameters clear, because the ground has to move for this to work.
- Something the pulling cable can’t get past — a collapsed section, a concrete encasement, a heavy repair clamp. Those need a point excavation first.
- Sharp bends. Bends of 22.5° and 45° are routine. A 90° is specialist work.
- Shallow pipe being upsized, where displacing that much soil can lift the ground above it.
And as with lining, bursting is not a way to re-grade a line. It replaces the pipe along roughly the path the old one took, and the published guidance says plainly that longer elevation variances usually remain afterwards.
Open excavation — digging it up
Still the right answer sometimes. Trenchless methods have not made a trench obsolete.
You dig when the pipe has lost its shape and nothing can be pulled or pushed through it; when the line genuinely needs to sit at a different slope than the old one; when the geometry or the neighbouring utilities rule the other methods out; or when the run is short enough and shallow enough that a trench is simply the cheaper job.
A dig is also the only one of the four where somebody looks at your pipe, and the soil around it, with their own eyes.
What none of them fix
A belly. Grade is grade. A liner follows the sag, and a burst head follows roughly the old path. The only way to change the slope a pipe sits at is to dig it up and lay it again.
This is worth saying clearly, because a belly is both the most alarming-looking finding in a typical Denver metro report and the one least likely to need anything done about it. How long and how deep a belly has to be before it matters. If somebody is selling you a lining to fix a low spot, that is a conversation to slow down.
What has to happen before any of them
Two things — and they are the only part of a sewer repair we have anything to do with.
The line has to be clean. You can’t judge a pipe through its own buildup, and you can’t line one either.
The defect has to be located and marked on the ground. A footage figure off a camera reel is close rather than exact, for reasons worth understanding before anyone starts digging. When a defect goes into one of our reports we locate it and mark it — a green flag in the lawn, or a green arrow sprayed on the concrete — so the repair crew digs to a mark instead of to a number. Any good repair company then verifies it with their own locator before breaking ground.
What the price actually turns on
We don’t quote this work and we won’t guess at your number. These are the things that move it:
- How much of the run is involved — one patch, or the full length
- How deep the pipe is
- Whether the work sits under a basement floor, under a driveway, or under lawn
- How many openings the method needs, and what has to be put back afterwards
- Whether something has to be excavated first before a trenchless method can run at all
Which is the same point as the top of this page, arriving from the other direction: a precise diagnosis is what gives you access to the cheap end of that list.
Who we send people to
When a line genuinely needs one of these, we point people to R.C Pipeline — (303) 597-8396 — who do underground sewer repair and replacement across the metro. They’re BBB accredited with an A+ rating, and you can check that yourself rather than take our word for it.
We don’t take a referral fee. The moment money changes hands for a recommendation, the recommendation is worth nothing.
And get more than one number — including past anyone we’ve named. Whoever you call, the questions worth asking are which of the methods above they think applies to your line and why, whether they’ll show you the defect on camera before they quote the repair, and whether they can tell you what it would cost to fix the one spot instead of the whole run.
Bring us your report
If you’re holding a report recommending a repair and you want to know whether it’s describing a line that needs one, send it to us — call Cam on (720) 435-7315 or email ourdrainandsewer@gmail.com with the report and the video link. Cam reads every report and watches every video before anything is quoted.
We only do maintenance — cleaning, jetting, milling scale out of cast iron, cutting roots, and NASSCO certified camera inspection. We don’t replace sewer lines and we don’t dig. So when we tell you a report describes a line that needs cleaning rather than repairing, we aren’t turning down work. We never had it to sell.