Replacing old main drain pipe

Old drain is at least 45 years old and has broken under a concrete slab and roots get in and clog it up every 6 months. One estimate was for $3K, which includes breaking a concrete patio, installing new drain pipe and replacing patio.

There are 2 alternates that I thought about doing instead to keep from breaking up the concrete....

1 - Slide a PVC pipe inside the old terra cotta pipe. Advantage is lower cost, but it also makes the pipe diameter smaller.

2 - Re-route a new drain pipe around the patio. This would be my first choice except that the only way is to go out 90 degrees from the original, which means either two 90 degrees bends -- or 45 degrees if that is available.

I posted a sketch the following newsgroup - the closest one I could find to plumbing...

alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking

If anyone has experience with this kind of situation, I would appreciate hearing a few words.

Thanks!

Bob

Reply to
Mail Man Bob
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There are commercial alternatives to fix this... Saw it just a few weeks ago on one of the PBS shows, they use a liner with a polyester or epoxy resin to line old drain/sewer pipes. They did a pipe from inside the house with a hole at the other end, no lawn damage or anything.

Sadly, I don't remember the name of the process, but it seemed to only slightly reduce the ID of the line. Looked very viable!

Reply to
PeterD

Yeah- bite the bullet and replace with PVC all the way from the cleanout fitting in the basement, to the the street connection. It won't cost that much more, you will never have to worry about it again, and you should make a big chunk of it back if you sell the place. To anyone that has ever had a main sewer line fail, a fresh line in a house they are looking at is a BIG plus. That blown-in fabric/epoxy liner thing they showed on TOH only makes sense, IMHO, in an old-urban setting where it takes weeks and a fortune to get the permits and book the crews for a proper replacement. In a smaller town, it is No Big Deal. Do it in next few weeks, and the grass patch should get a good start before first frost. $3k, including replacing the concrete flatwork, would be real cheap around here, unless the total run is real short. I'd definitely get more estimates, and probably take the middle one. It is a couple days of work for several guys using some expensive hardware, so it adds up quick.

aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

The 4" PVC line exiting my house has a pair of 45's on it. No problem with doing it that way, so long as you observe proper slope and whatnot.

Reply to
J.A. Michel

You should bear in mind that the city sewer "tap" may be as deep as six feet which amounts to a serious trenching job. On our current room addition project we opted to route the PVC from the new bath to connect with the existing house-to-city sewer (under the back alley in this instance) since the city sewer was almost eight feet down!

Reply to
Dave in Houston

My city sewer is 11ft down. I've got a 1/2 bath and a floor drain in the basement drained by gravity.

Reply to
J.A. Michel

Mail Man Bob,

As I posted in my reply in abpw, take a look at

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Hope this helps.

Peter.

Reply to
Peter Bogiatzidis

Thanks. I did -- looks like a clever idea, but way too complicated or expensive for what I'm doing. I'll look for a flexible thin wall pvc or something similar to that for this short run.

Reply to
Mail Man Bob

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