Utah · Open territory
Sewer Pipe Lining in Utah
Utah's sewer laterals run from basements set deep against a three-foot frost line, through the old lake-bed clays and alluvial fans of the Wasatch Front, under some of the fastest-growing suburbs in the country. This page covers what fails under Salt Lake City, Provo, Ogden and the rest of the state, who owns the pipe under the street, and how it gets rebuilt from inside.
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What is in the ground in Utah
The median Utah home dates from around 1990, but Salt Lake City's Avenues, Sugar House, Liberty Wells and the Capitol Hill neighborhoods, Ogden's and Provo's older districts and Logan were built between 1890 and 1940 on terra cotta laterals with a joint every two or three feet, and cast iron where the lateral passes through a stone or brick foundation. The postwar expansion that filled Murray, Holladay, Bountiful, Kearns, Orem, Sandy and the first West Valley subdivisions used clay, concrete and a good deal of Orangeburg fiber pipe through the 1960s, with cast iron under every basement floor. Basements are nearly universal in Utah, so the lateral leaves below the basement floor and runs eight feet or more down to the main. Houses built since the mid-1970s, which is most of Utah County, Davis County, the southwest valley and St. George, have PVC laterals that fail at a fitting or a belly where the lot was built on fill, and a great deal of Utah's newer housing is on fill or on graded benches.
Soil, water and weather
The Wasatch Front sits on the bed of ancient Lake Bonneville: fine lake-bottom clays and silts in the valley floors, which are soft, compressible and prone to settling, and coarse alluvial-fan gravels along the bench where the mountains meet the valley. Laterals on the valley floor settle into bellies; laterals on the bench run steep and through rock. The frost line runs about three feet along the Front and deeper in the mountains and Cache Valley, so laterals are deep and shallow or disturbed joints heave each winter; the digging season is short above Salt Lake. Groundwater is shallow in the lowest parts of the valleys and near the lake, and spring runoff from the mountains raises it further, infiltrating open joints. The Wasatch Fault runs the length of the Front, and the state's liquefaction maps are a fair guide to where a camera finds offsets in otherwise sound pipe. Southern Utah, around St. George, is a different world: sandstone, expansive clays and caliche in a desert climate with no frost. Roots from the Norway maples, elms, sycamores and cottonwoods along every older Utah street fill clay joints, and in the dry summers they hunt for the moisture a leaking joint provides.
What shows up on Utah camera inspections
- Roots from Norway maples, elms, sycamores and cottonwoods in the joints of century-old clay laterals in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo and Logan
- Bellies from settling Lake Bonneville clays on the valley floors, and steep rocky laterals on the bench
- Orangeburg fiber pipe collapsing under 1950s-60s subdivisions in Murray, Holladay, Bountiful, Kearns and Orem
- Laterals eight feet and deeper below basement floors, with a three-foot frost line on top
- Spring-runoff groundwater infiltrating open joints in the low valleys
- Fault-zone offsets and fill settlement under newer subdivisions, and caliche and expansive clay around St. George
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.
Sewer Pipe Lining (CIPP)
A resin-saturated liner cured inside the old sewer becomes a jointless new pipe, installed from a cleanout or manhole with nothing dug up.
Best for: Root-filled clay joints, scaled cast iron under a slab, cracked concrete or Orangeburg that still holds its shape, and any line under hardscape, a building or a mature tree.
Pipe Bursting
A bursting head splits the old pipe underground and pulls a new fused polyethylene line in behind it, between two small pits.
Best for: Crushed, deformed or collapsed pipe, severe offsets, undersized lines that need a larger diameter, and Orangeburg that has gone oval.
Sectional Point Repair
A short liner, two to twelve feet long, cured over one defect, leaving the sound pipe on either side alone.
Best for: One cracked joint, one offset, one root intrusion or one leaking connection in an otherwise sound line.
Storm Drain Lining
Cured-in-place and spin-cast lining for corrugated metal, concrete and clay storm pipe, culverts and roof drains, without closing the road or the parking lot.
Best for: Corrugated metal pipe rusted through at the invert, concrete storm lines with open joints, roof drains and parking lot drainage under slabs.
Who owns the pipe, and who issues the permit
Across Utah the lateral is the property owner's to own and maintain, the sewer lateral from the house to the point where it joins the public sewer, including the length under the park strip and street; Salt Lake City Public Utilities, the suburban cities and the special service districts that serve much of Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties all work that way, with a handful maintaining the portion in the right-of-way. The work takes a plumbing permit from the city or county pulled by a Utah-licensed plumbing contractor, and most utilities add a sewer permit and an inspection of the connection; any pit in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way or excavation permit; and Blue Stakes of Utah must be notified before any excavation. Most utilities approve lining when the connection at the main is documented on video. Lining from the basement cleanout avoids the deep trench, the frost and the park-strip tree together.
Finding a lining contractor in Utah
Utah does not yet have a verified installer listed on this site, which is why the number on this page rings the national line. Call it or send the form with the property address and what the camera or the symptoms are showing, and we will locate a qualified trenchless contractor near you and make the introduction; there is no charge for that. If you are a Utah lining contractor with five or more years in business and a strong Google rating, the territory is open: apply to be listed.
Estimates are free. Call now. (855) 804-1434
Where lining is in demand across Utah
The pipe problems described above are concentrated in the older cities and the postwar suburbs around them. The communities below are the ones Utah property owners ask about most, and the same methods apply everywhere in between.
A straight answer about your Utah sewer line
Along the Wasatch Front a lateral is typically deep, old in the cities and still round, which suits a liner, but on the valley floor it may have settled into a belly over lake-bed clay that no liner can lift. The camera draws that distinction, fixes each defect to a point above ground with its depth and leaves the footage with you. The proposal then names the method, the run length, the cost and the reasons the other options were turned down, including bursting or an open cut when that is the straight answer.
Estimates are free. Call now. (855) 804-1434
How a job runs
Camera first. Always.
A sewer quote given without video is a guess, and guesses are how homeowners end up paying for a liner that was never going to fix the problem. Here's the sequence we follow on every job.
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Step 1
Camera inspection, recorded
A self-leveling camera runs the full line from the cleanout, manhole or roof drain to the main. Every crack, offset, root mass, belly and connection is logged with its distance, and a locator marks each one on the surface with its depth. You get the recording.
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Step 2
Cleaning to bare wall
A hydro jetter, with chain cutters or a descaler where cast iron or roots call for them, strips the pipe to its original surface. The camera goes through again afterward, because a cleaned pipe tells the truth about its condition in a way a dirty one cannot.
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Step 3
A written scope, with the alternatives
The scope names the method, the footage and diameter involved, the price, the permits and inspections that apply, and the reasons the other methods were set aside. When the right answer is a dig, the scope says so.
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Step 4
Permits and notifications
The installer pulls the plumbing permit, any right-of-way or sewer-authority permit, schedules the inspections the local authority requires and files the utility-locate ticket before anything is opened.
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Step 5
The work, usually in a day
A residential liner typically cures in a few hours; bursting a lateral takes a day or two; a building or municipal reach is phased so no one loses their drains for more than a night. Branch lines are reinstated with a robotic cutter.
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Step 6
Final video, with you watching
The camera goes back through the finished pipe. You see the new interior end to end, and the recording goes in your file along with the warranty and the permit sign-offs.