Sewer Pipe Lining in Georgia

What is in the ground in Georgia

Georgia's median home dates from the early 1990s, among the youngest in the country, because the Atlanta metro doubled and doubled again after 1980. The lining work, though, is in the older third of the stock. Atlanta's intown neighborhoods, Decatur, Marietta's and Athens' historic districts, Macon, Augusta, Columbus and Savannah were built between 1890 and 1940 on vitrified clay laterals with a joint every two or three feet, and Savannah's and Augusta's downtowns carry pipe older than that. The postwar ring, in East Cobb, Sandy Springs, Chamblee, Tucker and the first DeKalb subdivisions, used clay and a good deal of Orangeburg fiber pipe, which was sold across the Southeast into the early 1970s. Crawl spaces are more common than slabs or basements in Georgia, so the under-house drains are often cast iron hung in the crawl space, which lasts better than cast iron buried under a slab but still scales and pits. Houses built since the mid-1970s, which is most of the metro, have PVC laterals that fail at a fitting, a joint pulled apart by soil movement, or a belly where the lot was graded on fill.

Soil, water and weather

Georgia's Piedmont soil is red clay, and red clay is expansive: it swells after a wet winter, shrinks hard through an August drought, and over decades bends a shallow lateral into a belly or pulls a glued PVC joint apart. The Coastal Plain south of the fall line, from Macon and Columbus down to Savannah and Valdosta, is sand and sandy loam over limestone, with a shallow water table along the coast that infiltrates any open joint and makes a trench a dewatering job. Georgia does not freeze deep enough for frost to matter, but it does get fifty inches of rain, and in the Atlanta metro that rain has been the problem: inflow and infiltration through private laterals and public mains is what overloaded the system and put the City of Atlanta under its 1998 and 1999 consent decrees, with DeKalb and Fulton counties following under their own orders. The result is utilities that care about leaking laterals and inspect connections closely. Then there are the trees. Atlanta's canopy of oaks, poplars, maples and sweetgums is the densest of any major American city, and every one of them has found a clay joint.

What shows up on Georgia camera inspections

• Roots from Atlanta's oak, poplar, maple and sweetgum canopy packing the joints of pre-1940 clay laterals
• Bellies, offsets and pulled-apart PVC joints from expansive red clay across the Piedmont
• Orangeburg fiber pipe collapsing under 1950s-60s subdivisions in DeKalb, Cobb and Fulton
• Groundwater infiltration and sand intrusion along the coast and across the Coastal Plain
• Consent-decree utilities that inspect lateral connections closely and reject leaking ones
• Scaled cast iron in crawl spaces and under the slabs of mid-century ranch houses

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 of Georgia it is the property owner who owns and maintains the sewer lateral from the building to the public main, including the portion in the right-of-way. The City of Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management, DeKalb and Fulton counties, Cobb County Water System, Gwinnett County and Augusta Utilities all treat the lateral as private to the main, and several of them, Augusta among them, draw a specific line at the property line only for the purpose of who repairs a failure in the street; Macon-Bibb's utility holds the owner responsible even under the road. A plumbing permit from the city or county is required for lateral repair and lining, pulled by a Georgia-licensed plumbing contractor; a pit in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way encroachment permit; and Georgia 811 must be notified before any excavation. The consent-decree utilities in the Atlanta metro want video of a finished liner at the connection, and lining from the cleanout keeps the job off the street permit entirely.

Lining crews in Georgia

Lining, bursting and spot repairs in Georgia are performed by Georgia lining crews at Fletch Barney Trenchless, covering metro Atlanta and projects across Georgia. 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. (877) 959-0155

Where lining is in demand across Georgia

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

A straight answer about your Georgia sewer line

Roots in a Georgia clay lateral are a lining job and a belly in a Georgia PVC lateral is not, and the two produce the same backup. The camera tells them apart, locates each defect from above and leaves you with the recording. The written scope names the method, the footage and the price, and says plainly when a section of pipe has moved too far for a liner and has to be burst or dug.

Estimates are free. Call now. (877) 959-0155