Saving infrastructure instead of replacing it

The pipe that is already there

A clay main laid in 1920 is, in one sense, worth a great deal: it occupies a graded, surveyed alignment under a street, with connections to every property along it and manholes at the right intervals. Digging it out throws that away and rebuilds it from nothing. Lining it keeps the alignment, the connections and the structures and replaces only the part that failed — the pipe wall. The same logic applies to a private lateral: the route from the house to the main was dug once, at full cost, and trenchless replacement reuses it.

The street above it

A road is rebuilt in layers, and a utility trench cut across it never patches back to the original strength. Cities know this; many charge a pavement-degradation fee for any cut in a street resurfaced within the last few years, and some prohibit cuts altogether for a period after paving. Lining from manhole to manhole, or bursting a lateral from a curb pit, leaves the pavement whole and the paving budget unspent.

Everything built over the line

Over a lateral's lifetime, people build. Driveways are poured, additions are added, pools and patios go in, trees grow. Each one raises the cost of an open-cut replacement until the pipe becomes, in effect, undiggable. Trenchless work makes those lines replaceable again without touching what was built over them.

Extending life rather than resetting it

Asset management treats a sewer system as a portfolio with a condition score for every segment. Trenchless rehabilitation lets a utility move a failing segment back to good condition for a fraction of replacement cost, which means more of the system can be addressed with the same budget, sooner. Lateral programs extend the same thinking to the private side of the property line, where most of a system's infiltration enters.

For a property owner

The same principle in one sentence: replace the failed pipe, not the yard, the driveway and the trees. The contractors listed on this site are found through the state directory.