Residential sewer lateral lining in Boston

A century of pipe under one street

A single block in Boston can hold four generations of sewer lateral. The Victorian and triple-decker era laid vitrified clay in short lengths with mortared joints; after a hundred New England winters of frost heave and a hundred summers of maple roots, those joints are open. Between the wars, cast iron came into use, outside and under the basement floor, and cast iron rusts from the bottom of the pipe upward until the invert is gone. The postwar tracts used Orangeburg, a tar-and-fiber pipe that softens and flattens with age. Everything since the 1970s is PVC, which roots and rust cannot touch but which cracks where a slab settled and bellies where backfill was poor. Each failure shows up on a camera, and each has a no-dig fix.

What the homeowner owns

In most Massachusetts cities and towns the owner is responsible for the lateral from the house all the way to the sewer main, including the section under the sidewalk and the street. That is the part a trench makes expensive: a street-opening permit, a police detail, trench plates, compaction and a paving patch, for a few feet of pipe. Lining runs the new pipe from the basement cleanout to the main in one pass, so the public way is never opened. the verified installer for Boston homes is the verified installer covering Boston and Suffolk County.

How the day goes

The crew arrives with a camera, a jetter and the liner. The camera goes in first and each defect is located and marked with its distance and depth. The jetter cleans the line to bare wall, cutting roots and scale. The liner, a felt or fiberglass tube saturated with resin, is pulled or inverted into the pipe, pressed to the wall with air or water, and cured with hot water, steam or UV light. Two to four hours later it is a hard, jointless pipe inside the old one. Any branch connections are reopened from inside, the camera goes back in to record the result, and the drains are back in service. guide to CIPP liner installation explains each step and what the materials are.

Under the basement and under the yard

Basements are where lining matters most in New England. The old fix for corroded cast iron under a slab was to jackhammer the floor, dig, replace, pour and wait; it took a week and left the basement unusable. A liner cures inside that cast iron from the cleanout, with the floor untouched. The same is true of a lateral under a driveway, a front walk, a stone wall or a mature maple: the pipe is rebuilt, the surface is not. And because the work happens below the frost line, it is done year-round; a frozen yard is no obstacle.

When bursting replaces the line

A pipe that has collapsed, flattened or bellied so badly that it holds standing water cannot host a liner. Pipe bursting is the no-dig answer: a bursting head pulled through the old line from a small pit at each end splits it apart while new HDPE follows, and the yard between the pits stays intact. It is also the method for upsizing a lateral that was never big enough. A good proposal states which method it rests on and why the footage calls for it.

What to ask for

Before you sign: the pre-inspection video, the method and why, the liner or pipe material and its rated life, the warranty in writing, the permit plan, and whether the crew doing the work is the company you hired. After the job: keep the post-repair video and the warranty with the house papers. They answer the question the next buyer's inspector will ask. Verified installers, checked for license, equipment and completed work, are listed at the installer directory.

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