Which sewer service a Chicago line needs
There are four answers to a failing sewer line and the pipe picks one of them, not the contractor. This page is how to tell which case you are in before anybody quotes you for the wrong one.
A Chicago sewer line fails in a small number of ways. Clay tile lets roots in at the joints and settles out of line with itself. Cast iron under the slab rusts from the bottom up. Orangeburg goes oval. What separates a cheap job from an expensive one is almost never the contractor's rate. It is which of those has happened, and how much of the run it has happened to.
So the order below is the order the work actually happens in, not the order of what we would rather sell. A sewer camera inspection comes first because it is the only thing that settles the question. After that, a line that is cracked but round is a pipe lining job, a line that is gone is a pipe bursting job, and one bad section in an otherwise sound run is sewer line repair and nothing more.
Two more things before you read any of them. A broken sewer pipe repair in Chicago may be partly the City's cost rather than yours, depending on where the break sits, and that boundary is drawn on the page about trenchless sewer repair in Chicago. And a quote for sewer line replacement is worth reading twice in this city, because the phrase also belongs to a City program about drinking water that has nothing to do with your drain.
Sewer Line Repair One bad section of clay or cast iron is the usual answer. A camera tells you whether the rest of the run is worth keeping.
Learn more
Sewer Pipe Lining CIPP cures a new pipe inside the old one. It works on a cracked line that still holds its shape, and on nothing else.
Learn more
Pipe Bursting The answer when there is nothing left to line. A bursting head splits the old pipe outward and pulls the new one in behind it.
Learn more
Camera Inspection The first job, not an add-on. In Chicago the video is also what the City asks for before it will review a private drain repair.
Learn more
Pick by what you already know
- Sewer Line Repair
- You know something is wrong and not what.
- Sewer Pipe Lining
- The pipe is cracked but still round.
- Pipe Bursting
- The pipe is collapsed, oval or too small.
- Camera Inspection
- You have not looked yet.
Not sure which of the four you need?
Nobody outside the trade is, and guessing costs more than asking. Send the address and what the drain is doing, and the answer starts with a camera in the line rather than a method chosen off a page.
Free, written, and no obligation. We answer requests the same day.