Sewer Pipe Lining in Virginia

What is in the ground in Virginia

The median Virginia home dates from the mid-1980s, but Richmond's Fan and Church Hill, Norfolk's Ghent and Colonial Place, Alexandria's Old Town and Del Ray, Roanoke, Lynchburg, Petersburg and Charlottesville's older neighborhoods were built between 1880 and 1940 on vitrified clay tile with a bell-and-spigot joint every few feet, and Richmond, Alexandria and Lynchburg still run combined sewers under their oldest districts. The postwar suburbs that filled Arlington, Fairfax County, Henrico and Chesterfield counties and the Hampton Roads cities used clay, concrete, asbestos-cement and a good share of Orangeburg fiber pipe through the 1950s and 1960s, with cast iron under basement floors in the north and west and in crawl spaces toward the coast. Basements are the norm in Northern Virginia and the Piedmont, crawl spaces and slabs in Tidewater where the water table decides. Houses built since the mid-1970s, which is most of Loudoun, Prince William, Chesterfield and the Virginia Beach and Chesapeake growth, have PVC laterals that fail at a fitting, a pulled joint or a belly on fill.

Soil, water and weather

West of the fall line, Virginia's Piedmont is red clay and saprolite over schist, gneiss and granite, with ledge close to the surface across much of Northern Virginia and the Richmond suburbs; the clay swells and shrinks with the seasons and bends shallow laterals into bellies, and a trench that hits rock is a hammer job. East of it, the Coastal Plain and Tidewater are sand and marine clay with a water table at or near the surface across Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and the Peninsula, and the land itself is subsiding at one of the fastest rates on the East Coast while sea level rises against it; open joints there take in groundwater continuously, and any trench is a pump-out. The frost line runs about two feet in Tidewater and nearly three in the Piedmont and the Valley, enough to heave shallow joints. The Hampton Roads Sanitation District's long-running federal consent decree over sanitary sewer overflows made inflow and infiltration through private laterals a regional preoccupation, and its member cities inspect connections and run lateral programs accordingly; Richmond, Alexandria and Lynchburg carry their own combined-sewer orders. Roots from the oaks, maples, sycamores and crape myrtles along every older Virginia street fill clay joints in the usual way.

What shows up on Virginia camera inspections

• Roots from oaks, maples and sycamores in the joints of pre-1940 clay laterals under Richmond, Norfolk, Alexandria, Roanoke and Lynchburg
• Groundwater at the surface in Tidewater infiltrating every open joint and flooding any trench, with the land subsiding beneath it
• Orangeburg and asbestos-cement laterals cracking and collapsing under 1950s-60s subdivisions across Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads
• Bellies and pulled joints from expansive Piedmont clay, and ledge close to the surface that turns a trench into a rock job
• Combined-sewer and HRSD consent-decree enforcement that inspects lateral connections and rejects ones that leak
• A lateral-ownership rule that changes between Tidewater cities, with some maintaining the portion in the right-of-way

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 Virginia localities the property owner owns and maintains the sewer lateral from the foundation wall to the tap on the main, taking in the section in the right-of-way; Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria Renew, Richmond DPU, Henrico and Chesterfield counties and the Hampton Roads cities all work that way, though a number of Tidewater cities maintain the portion from the property line or cleanout at the right-of-way to the main themselves, so the local rule must be confirmed. The work takes a plumbing permit from the city or county pulled by a Virginia-licensed plumbing contractor, and many localities add a sewer connection permit and an inspection of the finished connection; any pit in the right-of-way needs a right-of-way or land-disturbance permit, and on a state road a VDOT permit; and Virginia 811 must be notified before any excavation. Most utilities treat a lined lateral as acceptable if the tie-in is shown on camera. Lining from a cleanout avoids the ledge in the Piedmont and the dewatered trench in Tidewater.

Lining crews in Virginia

For commercial, industrial and municipal pipe in Virginia, the work is done by the CIPP Verified Installer directory, covering commercial and municipal lining across North Carolina and Virginia. Residential inquiries in Virginia are matched to a qualified installer through the national line below.

Estimates are free. Call now. (877) 955-6399

Where lining is in demand across Virginia

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

A straight answer about your Virginia sewer line

On a Virginia line the first thing to settle is whose pipe it is under the street, and the second is whether the camera finds a round pipe with bad joints or a pipe that has lost its shape. Century-old clay with roots in every joint usually lines; Orangeburg gone oval or a lateral bellied by subsidence does not. The inspection locates each defect from above with its depth and the recording is yours. What you get back is a scope in writing: the method, how many feet it covers, the price, and why each other option was passed over.

Estimates are free. Call now. (877) 955-6399