Sewer Pipe Lining in New Jersey

What is in the ground in New Jersey

The median New Jersey home dates from the late 1960s, and in Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Trenton, Camden and the older towns along the Northeast Corridor it is far older: whole neighborhoods were built between 1880 and 1930 on terra cotta laterals with a joint every two or three feet, connected to combined sewers that still serve twenty-one New Jersey municipalities. The postwar suburbs that filled Bergen, Middlesex, Union, Monmouth and Camden counties, the Levitt and Levitt-style tracts of Willingboro and Levittown's New Jersey cousins, and the Shore's year-round towns used clay, concrete, asbestos-cement and Orangeburg, the tar-paper pipe of the period, in quantity through the 1950s and 1960s, with cast iron under every basement floor and slab. Houses built since the mid-1970s have PVC laterals. Basements are the norm in the north and center of the state and slabs and crawl spaces more common toward the Shore and in South Jersey, where the water table decides. The result is a lateral that is deep and old in the north, shallow and wet in the south, and in both cases under something expensive.

Soil, water and weather

North Jersey sits on glacial till and the Piedmont's shale and basalt, with ledge close to the surface in the Watchungs and Bergen County's hills and dense, poorly drained clay in the valleys; the frost line runs about three feet, so laterals are deep and shallow joints heave. South Jersey and the Shore sit on the Coastal Plain, sand and gravel over marine clay, with a water table that rises to within a few feet of the surface near the coast and the Pine Barrens' streams; open joints there take in sand and groundwater, and a trench fills before the backhoe is out of it. Inflow and infiltration through private laterals is a statewide preoccupation because of the combined-sewer communities' long-term control plans under the state's CSO permits and the Passaic Valley, Middlesex County, Bergen County and Camden County utilities' own consent orders. Roots from the oaks, maples, sycamores and London planes planted along every older New Jersey street fill clay joints, and the state's mature suburban canopy is now sixty to seventy years old.

What shows up on New Jersey camera inspections

• Roots from oaks, maples, sycamores and London planes in the joints of pre-1930 clay laterals under Newark, Paterson, Trenton, Camden and the Corridor towns
• Orangeburg and asbestos-cement laterals collapsing or cracking under 1950s-60s subdivisions in Bergen, Middlesex, Monmouth and Camden counties
• Laterals under driveways, patios and the neighbor's property on lots so narrow a trench is a diplomatic event
• Sand and groundwater entering open joints on the Coastal Plain and at the Shore
• Ledge rock in Bergen County and the Watchungs, and deep basement laterals that make any trench a braced excavation
• A lateral-ownership rule that changes at every municipal line, and point-of-sale inspection ordinances in a growing number of 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

New Jersey's rule on who owns the lateral changes at the municipal boundary more than in almost any other state, and it is the first thing to confirm. Jersey City, East Orange, Clifton and many others hold the owner responsible for the entire lateral to the main; Camden, Trenton and Edison split responsibility at the curb or the property line, with the municipality or utility maintaining the portion in the street; Paterson repairs the stretch from the curb to the main at no charge to the owner; and Atlantic City's sewers are run by an investor-owned utility, Atlantic City Sewerage, under a Board of Public Utilities tariff with its own rules. Whatever the split, the work on the private side takes a plumbing permit from the municipality pulled by a New Jersey-licensed master plumber, a sewer connection or road-opening permit from the municipality or the sewerage authority for anything in the right-of-way, and a New Jersey One Call notification before any excavation. Most municipalities and authorities approve lining when the connection at the main is documented on video, and a growing number require a lateral inspection at the point of sale.

Lining crews in New Jersey

Lining, bursting and spot repairs in New Jersey are performed by South Jersey lining crews serving New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, covering New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania from a South Jersey base. 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 New Jersey

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

A straight answer about your New Jersey sewer line

On a New Jersey lot the two questions are whose pipe it is under the street and whether the camera finds a round pipe with bad joints or a pipe that has lost its shape. The first is answered by the municipality; the second only by the inspection, which puts a paint mark and a depth on every problem it finds, and the recording is yours to keep. The written scope names the method, the footage, the price and the reasons the alternatives were set aside.

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