Sewer Pipe Lining in Arizona

What is in the ground in Arizona

Arizona is a young state by housing age, with the median home dating from the early 1990s, and that youth is why the lining conversation here is so specific. The pre-war cores of Phoenix and Tucson drain through vitrified clay, as everywhere, but the enormous postwar and 1970s-80s expansion of the Valley and the Tucson basin was built almost entirely on concrete slabs, and the branch drains under those slabs are cast iron. Cast iron in Arizona has a particular problem: the hard, mineral-heavy water that runs through it, combined with long dry stretches when little flows, scales the pipe from the inside until a 4-inch line is passing water through a channel the width of a garden hose, and the bottom of the pipe thins and pits until it leaks into the soil under the house. The lateral from the house to the street in those same tracts is often clay, sometimes asbestos-cement, and in the newest subdivisions PVC or ABS. Orangeburg is rare in Arizona. So the typical job is a scaled cast iron kitchen or main drain under a slab, descaled and lined or epoxy-coated, with the exterior lateral lined full-length if the clay joints have opened.

Soil, water and weather

The soil makes digging expensive and lining attractive. Much of the Phoenix area sits on caliche, a calcium-carbonate hardpan that behaves like concrete and has to be broken with a jackhammer or a breaker, and the alluvial fans around Tucson are not much softer. Where the ground is not hardpan it is often expansive clay, which swells after a monsoon downpour and shrinks for the rest of the year, bending shallow laterals into bellies over decades. Fissuring from groundwater withdrawal has cracked ground and pipe in parts of the Valley and Pinal County. Then there is the water itself: with so little rain, roots in Arizona go looking for the only reliable moisture around, which is a leaking sewer joint, and a mesquite, palo verde or ficus will fill a clay lateral with fine roots that return within months of each cabling. Freeze is not a factor below the Mogollon Rim; in Flagstaff and the high country it is, and laterals there sit deeper and fail more like Colorado's.

What shows up on Arizona camera inspections

• Cast iron under 1960s-1990s slab houses scaled nearly shut by hard water and pitted along the bottom
• Roots from mesquite, palo verde and ficus packing the joints of clay laterals in search of moisture
• Caliche and hardpan that turns a simple trench into a day of jackhammering
• Bellies and offsets from expansive clay that swells after each monsoon season
• Asbestos-cement laterals in some 1950s-70s tracts that crack and should not be disturbed by digging
• Grease and scale in restaurant and multifamily lines across the Valley

Which trenchless method fits

The camera decides. A line that still holds its shape is a lining job; a line that has been crushed, has lost its slope or has collapsed is a replacement job; a single bad joint in an otherwise sound run is a spot repair. Here is what each one does and where it stops being the right tool.

Who owns the pipe, and who issues the permit

In Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa and most Arizona cities, the property owner is responsible for the sewer lateral from the foundation wall to the tap on the main, taking in the section under the sidewalk and street. Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation and the City of Phoenix Water Services Department both treat the house connection as private up to the main. A plumbing permit from the city covers the private-side work; an excavation in the right-of-way carries its own right-of-way permit from the city engineer; and Arizona 811 must be called before any excavation. Many Arizona cities will also want a licensed contractor with the appropriate Registrar of Contractors classification for sewer work. Lining and descaling from an interior cleanout or a roof vent avoids both the slab cut and the street permit, which in Arizona is most of the cost of the old way of doing things.

Finding a lining contractor in Arizona

Arizona does not yet have a verified installer listed on this site, which is why the number on this page rings the national line. Call it or send the form with the property address and what the camera or the symptoms are showing, and we will locate a qualified trenchless contractor near you and make the introduction; there is no charge for that. If you are a Arizona lining contractor with five or more years in business and a strong Google rating, the territory is open: apply to be listed.

Estimates are free. Call now. (855) 804-1434

Where lining is in demand across Arizona

The pipe problems described above are concentrated in the older cities and the postwar suburbs around them. The communities below are the ones Arizona property owners ask about most, and the same methods apply everywhere in between.

A straight answer about your Arizona sewer line

An Arizona sewer quote that does not come with a video is a guess about whether the problem is scale, roots or geometry, and those three have three different fixes. The camera and a descaling pass first; then a written scope that says whether the line can be lined or coated in place, or whether a belly or a collapse means a section of slab has to come up after all. Send any footage you already have, or start with the inspection; either way the recording is yours and the estimate is free.

Estimates are free. Call now. (855) 804-1434