Sewer Pipe Lining in Florida

What is in the ground in Florida

Florida's median home dates from the late 1980s, which makes it one of the youngest housing stocks in the country, and yet it has one of the oldest sewer problems: cast iron under the slab. From the 1950s through the early 1970s, nearly every house built in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Orlando, Jacksonville and the Gold Coast went up on a monolithic slab with cast iron drain lines cast into the fill beneath it. Cast iron in Florida's soil and climate does not last. Sulfuric acid from the sewer gas eats the crown of the pipe, the bottom pits through, and the moist, often brackish soil corrodes it from outside at the same time. By fifty or sixty years the pipe is rough, half its original diameter with scale, and leaking under the floor, and the first symptom is a slow kitchen drain or a smell that no amount of cabling fixes. The lateral from the house to the street in those same tracts is usually clay or, in some areas, Orangeburg; after the mid-1970s it is PVC. The pre-war cores of Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami, Key West and Pensacola drain through clay with open joints. So the Florida lining job is very often two jobs: descaling and lining or coating the cast iron under the slab from inside the house, and lining the clay lateral out to the street from the cleanout.

Soil, water and weather

Florida's ground is sand over limestone, and the limestone is karst, honeycombed with solution cavities. Sinkholes get the headlines, but the everyday effect is settlement: a few inches of subsidence over a buried cavity bends a lateral into a belly or opens a joint, and the sand around the pipe then washes into the opening with each rain. The water table across much of the peninsula sits within a few feet of the surface and rises to the surface during the summer wet season and after a tropical system, which means any open joint takes in groundwater and any trench fills with water before the backhoe is out of it. Dewatering a Florida sewer trench is a cost all its own and a reason lining from a cleanout wins so often. Salt air on both coasts corrodes cast iron and galvanized pipe faster than anywhere inland. There is no frost. Roots are a smaller problem here than in the Northeast, but ficus, oak and Brazilian pepper will still fill a leaking clay joint, and the state's year-round growing season means they never stop.

What shows up on Florida camera inspections

• Cast iron under 1950s-70s slabs corroded through at the bottom and scaled nearly shut, the state's defining sewer failure
• Sand washing into open joints and bellies forming over karst settlement across the peninsula
• A water table within a few feet of the surface that floods any trench and infiltrates every bad joint
• Salt-air corrosion of cast iron and galvanized lines on both coasts
• Clay laterals with open joints under the pre-war cores of Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami and Pensacola
• Ficus, oak and Brazilian pepper roots in leaking joints, growing year-round

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 most Florida cities and counties the property owner is responsible for the sewer lateral from the building to the point of connection with the public main, including the portion under the sidewalk and street. Miami-Dade Water and Sewer, Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa, Orange County Utilities, JEA in Jacksonville, Broward and Palm Beach counties and the Gulf Coast utilities around Sarasota and Fort Myers all treat the lateral as private up to the main, with their own standards for the connection itself. The Florida Building Code requires a plumbing permit for lateral repair and lining, pulled by a state-certified or registered plumbing contractor, and most utilities want to inspect or see video of a finished liner where it meets the main. A pit in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way use permit from the city or county; Sunshine 811 must be called before any digging; and in the many Florida communities with homeowners associations, the association may own the mains under private streets and have its own say. Lining avoids the slab cut, the dewatering and the right-of-way permit at once.

Lining crews in Florida

Lining, bursting and spot repairs in Florida are performed by Florida pipe lining crews based in Sarasota, covering the Gulf Coast and projects statewide. 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. (941) 217-8139

Where lining is in demand across Florida

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

A straight answer about your Florida sewer line

A Florida sewer line is priced after a camera has been through it and not before, because scaled cast iron that descales and lines beautifully looks, from the surface, exactly like cast iron that has already rusted through and lost its shape. The inspection locates each defect from above and the recording is yours. The written scope names the method, the footage under the slab and out to the street, the price and the reasons the alternatives were set aside, including when a collapsed section under the floor leaves no choice but to open it.

Estimates are free. Call now. (941) 217-8139