Sewer Pipe Lining in Ohio

What is in the ground in Ohio

Ohio's median home was built in the late 1960s, and the big cities are older than that figure implies. Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown and Canton plumbed whole neighborhoods between the 1880s and 1930 with clay tile in short jointed lengths, set deep and tied, in the older half of each city, into combined sewers; Ohio has roughly eighty communities still carrying sewage and stormwater in the same pipe. The suburbs that filled in after the war, Parma, Euclid, the newer streets of Lakewood, Kettering, Upper Arlington, Whitehall, Sylvania and every ring around every Ohio city, ran clay, concrete and a great deal of Orangeburg fiber pipe to the street through the 1950s and 1960s, with cast iron under the basement floors. Basements are the rule, so the lateral exits well below grade and runs eight to twelve feet down to the main. Houses from the mid-1970s onward, across Delaware, Medina and Warren counties and the newer rings, are plumbed in PVC, which fails at a fitting or sags into a belly where the lot was built on fill.

Soil, water and weather

Northern and western Ohio sit on glacial till and lake-bed clay, dense and poorly drained, that holds water against the pipe for most of the year; the southeast, below the glacial limit, is the unglaciated Appalachian plateau of shale, sandstone and thin, rocky soils where a trench is a rock job and the laterals run steep. The frost line runs about three and a half feet in the north and three in the south, so laterals are deep and shallow or disturbed joints heave each winter. Spring thaw and the heavy rains that follow are basement-backup season: combined sewers surcharge, groundwater infiltrates every open joint and sewage comes up the floor drain. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District's Project Clean Lake, Cincinnati's MSD consent decree, Columbus's and Akron's long-term control plans and Toledo's have made every large Ohio utility attentive to private laterals that leak groundwater in, and a number of northeast Ohio communities now require a lateral inspection at the point of sale. Roots from the silver maples, Norway maples, ash and pin oaks planted along every older Ohio street fill clay joints as reliably as anywhere east of the Mississippi.

What shows up on Ohio camera inspections

• Roots from silver maples, Norway maples, ash and pin oaks in the joints of century-old clay laterals under Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton and Akron
• Orangeburg fiber pipe collapsing under 1950s-60s subdivisions in Parma, Euclid, Kettering, Upper Arlington and every suburban ring
• Laterals eight to twelve feet deep below basement floors in wet glacial clay, making any trench a braced excavation
• Spring-thaw basement backups from surcharging combined sewers and groundwater infiltration
• Rock and steep laterals across the unglaciated southeast, and frost that ends the digging season in December
• Point-of-sale lateral inspection ordinances in a growing number of northeast Ohio communities

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 Ohio responsibility for the sewer lateral rests with the property owner lateral from the structure to the main itself, the stretch under the tree lawn and street; NEORSD member communities, Cleveland Water Pollution Control, Columbus Public Utilities, Cincinnati's MSD, Toledo, Dayton, Akron and the suburban municipalities all work that way, with a handful of suburbs maintaining the portion in the right-of-way. The work takes a plumbing permit from the city or county building department pulled by an Ohio-licensed plumbing contractor, and most cities add a sewer permit and an inspection of the connection; any pit in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way or street-opening permit; and Ohio 811 must be notified before any excavation. Most utilities are fine with a lined lateral, given footage of the connection. Lining from the basement cleanout avoids the deep trench, the tree lawn maple and the street permit together.

Lining crews in Ohio

Lining, bursting and spot repairs in Ohio are performed by northern Ohio lining crews based in Wooster, covering northern Ohio. 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 Ohio

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

A straight answer about your Ohio sewer line

An Ohio lateral is deep, old and usually still round, which is the best possible combination for lining and the worst for digging, except where it is Orangeburg that has already gone oval. The camera tells them apart, ties every fault to a surface location and a depth, and the footage goes in your file. A written scope follows, naming the method chosen, the footage it covers, what it costs and why the other approaches did not fit, including when a collapsed section means a dig after all.

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