Sewer Pipe Lining in Colorado

What is in the ground in Colorado

Colorado's median home dates from the early 1980s, but Denver's streetcar neighborhoods, Boulder's older districts, Pueblo, Colorado Springs' Old North End and the mining-era towns were built between 1880 and 1930 on vitrified clay laterals with a mortar joint every few feet, and a great deal of that pipe is still in service. The postwar rings around Denver, in Lakewood, Arvada, Aurora, Englewood and the first Jefferson County subdivisions, used clay or concrete pipe to the street, and a fair amount of Orangeburg fiber pipe went in during the 1950s and 1960s before the state's building departments stopped allowing it. Basements are the norm in Colorado, so the lateral typically leaves the house below the basement floor and runs six to ten feet deep to the main, which makes an open trench deep, braced and expensive and makes lining from the basement cleanout the obvious alternative. Houses built after the mid-1970s have PVC or ABS laterals that fail at a fitting or settle into a belly, and the Front Range has an unusual number of those because so much of its newer housing sits on fill or on bentonite.

Soil, water and weather

The clay is the story. Bentonite-rich shale and claystone underlie much of the Denver metro, the north Front Range and the Colorado Springs area, and it swells dramatically when wet and shrinks when dry. The same soil that heaves basement floors and cracks foundations bends sewer laterals into bellies, shears them at the foundation wall and opens joints a few inches at a time. The frost line runs three feet or more across the plains and far deeper in the mountains, which is why laterals sit as deep as they do and why a shallow one can heave. Water is scarce on the plains, so roots from the cottonwoods, elms, ash and silver maples planted along every Front Range street go hunting for the only reliable moisture around, which is a leaking sewer joint, and they return within months of each cabling. The mountain towns add a short digging season and rock to the list. In Grand Junction and the Western Slope, the soils are different, alkaline and often gypsum-bearing, and they attack concrete pipe and mortar joints from the outside.

What shows up on Colorado camera inspections

• Bellies, offsets and sheared joints from expansive bentonite clay heaving and shrinking under the Front Range
• Roots from cottonwood, elm, ash and silver maple packing the joints of century-old clay laterals
• Orangeburg fiber pipe gone oval under 1950s-60s subdivisions in Lakewood, Arvada, Aurora and Englewood
• Laterals six to ten feet deep leaving below a basement floor, which makes any trench a braced, two-day job
• Concrete and clay pipe attacked by alkaline, gypsum-bearing soils on the Western Slope
• Frost heave on shallow laterals and a short digging season in the mountain towns

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

Across most of Colorado responsibility for the sewer lateral rests with the property owner service line from the building to the public main, including the portion under the sidewalk and street. Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs Utilities, the City of Boulder and most of the Front Range special districts work that way, and several require a plumber or a contractor licensed for sewer work to perform the repair and have the connection inspected. Denver in particular requires a sewer use and drainage permit for lateral work and an inspection of the finished connection. Any pit in the right-of-way takes a street-cut or right-of-way permit from the city or county; Colorado 811 must be notified before any excavation; and the utility, not the state, decides whether a lining permit is required and what video it wants of the finished liner. Because so much Colorado pipe is deep, a lining job that works entirely from the basement cleanout sidesteps most of the permits a trench would carry.

Lining crews in Colorado

Lining, bursting and spot repairs in Colorado are performed by Front Range sewer lining crews, covering Denver, Boulder and the Front Range. They are listed in the CIPP Verified Installer directory, which means licensing, completed work and lining equipment were checked before the listing went live.

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

Where lining is in demand across Colorado

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

A straight answer about your Colorado sewer line

A Colorado lateral with a belly from expansive clay cannot be fixed by lining it, and a Colorado lateral with roots in every joint cannot be fixed by cabling it again. The camera tells them apart, and the depth of the pipe tells you what a dig would cost by comparison. The inspection comes first and the recording is yours; the written scope names the method, the footage, the price and the reasons the alternatives were set aside, including when the honest answer is bursting the line rather than lining it.

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