When it comes to pipe rehabilitation, there’s no one-size-fits-all application. Cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) might be great for one kind of repair, but not for another. Slip-lining could be just what the doctor ordered in some situations, while pipe-bursting could be better for others.
But whatever the application, one thing is as clear: Trenchless repair capability provides another revenue stream for contractors, and makes their services more attractive to prospective customers who want the convenience of one-stop shopping. Here is a sampling of what some contractors say works best for them.
“Anybody who does any type of sewer work needs a lot of tools in their toolbox when they go out, and therefore you need the ability to understand what applications work in what situations,” says Charles Higbee, vice president of Eckard Brandes Inc. in Kailua, Hawaii. “Historically, we worked a lot with CIPP in the 1990s and found it a very effective lining, but very challenging.
“In a lot of ways, you can make a small mistake and have a catastrophic problem. But if everything goes well, you’re a hero and it looks simple to install. It’s a challenge, but a good liner end to end.
“A lot of times we use a product that uses microfine cement to infiltrate cracks and go around the outside of the pipe slightly and seal off the infiltration. It works really well on mainlines and laterals. It’s a cost-effective way to seal a pipe, but not a structural way to seal a pipe. It works hand-in-hand with a lot of other things.
“We also use an epoxy liner, which is a spiral-wrapped fiberglass liner that expands to meet the pipe. We can install it in intermittent areas – short areas where we don’t have to go whole length of pipe. Epoxy is about four times stronger than CIPP and doesn’t shrink.
“Another big benefit with these point repairs is that we have a flow-through situation, so we don’t have to bypass for any reason. We can just let the flow draw this in, expand it and in two or three hours it’s set up. It’s an ambient-cure epoxy.
“Long runs are scary because with ambient cure, you have a fixed, limited time to work with it. You have a lot of nervous employees when you say you want to go longer with epoxy. Six feet is about as long as we go.”
Higbee has some succinct advice for contractors who want to get into pipe rehabilitation. “Start slow with pipebursting or high-density polyethylene (HDPE) slip-lining,” he suggests. “And when you make your jump to that big pipe-lining contract, make sure you’ve got someone on board who has gone through it before.”
“We mainly work on laterals, and we use a cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) lining system for spot repairs,” explains Brad Walker, a project manager for Veolia Water North America-South LLC in Radcliff, Ky. “We’ve used other systems, but this system is something our own people can operate.
“It’s an ambient-cured product, as opposed to a steam-type process. The advantage is that the common working guy can shoot this system a lot easier. It takes up to three hours to cure, and while it’s doing that, we can move onto the next one and the next one and so on. It’s user-friendly.
“Doing pipe relining helps us sell jobs. It’s one more thing you can offer, along with camera and cleaning work. It’s an advantage because I can rehab the pipe to your home without digging up your yard. That’s a huge selling point when someone has a nice, well-manicured lawn.
“Normally, when you do a job, you leave it rough – it’s not very pretty when you get done. But with this process, you’re not tearing up yards. It makes for an easy repair; it’s a one-day job.”
“We usually use CIPP with an air-inversion method,” says John Stemmle, president of Stemmle Plumbing Repair Inc. in Richmond, Va. “We’ve tried pull-in-place, but prefer air-inversion. It seems to go in better, and we’re more comfortable with that process. We can typically complete a job in a day, depending on the scope of it and how involved it is.
“We got into pipe-lining because we’re a full-service plumbing, heating and drain-cleaning company. We try to offer customers full service, so they don’t have to go to anybody else. We also went into pipe lining because we like to be innovative and on the cutting edge.
“We do a lot of commercial work. In a lot of restaurants, the drink systems eat up cast-iron pipes, so we were trying to find a way to avoid breaking up the floors. It saves the customer money and downtime, and we can do the job quicker, and do more jobs.
“We have other contractors who refer work to us because they don’t do pipe lining. We like to stand out in the field by doing things other companies can’t. We also like the ability to do things in the best interest of our clients.
“CIPP is a big selling point. Part of it is that we can keep an operation down for a day instead of two or three days. We’ve done schools where we would have had to take up a wood gymnasium floor. Instead, you’d never know we were there.”
