Cured-in-place sewer pipe lining in New York

A pipe formed inside a pipe

Cured-in-place pipe, abbreviated CIPP, amounts to manufacturing a new sewer pipe in position, inside the one that is failing, without removing the old one. A sleeve of needled felt or woven glass fabric is impregnated with a thermosetting or UV-reactive resin, introduced into the cleaned lateral through a cleanout, and inflated with air or water so that it conforms to the host pipe. The resin is then set hard with heat or ultraviolet light. What remains is a rigid, smooth-walled pipe that follows the original alignment exactly, with no joints anywhere along its length. The old clay, iron or Orangeburg is simply the form it was cast in. A New York lateral that has leaked at every joint for decades can be sealed from the house to the main in a single afternoon, with nothing above it disturbed.

Host pipes that accept a liner

All that is required is a host that still has a round profile and a continuous fall for the liner to follow. Vitrified clay and terracotta with open, root-choked joints, the typical failure in the older parts of New York, line very well. Cast iron that has rusted through along its bottom also lines well; the liner does not need a watertight host, only one that holds its form. Cracked or separated ABS and PVC are fine. Orangeburg is a candidate as long as it has not gone oval. Pipe that has collapsed, sagged into a water-holding belly, or is too small for the building is not a candidate, and that pipe is burst and replaced instead. Which group a given lateral falls into is settled by the camera, and the design and material standards involved are set out at the CIPP reference site.

The sequence of work

The camera runs the length of the line first, logging every defect by distance and depth. High-pressure water then strips the interior to bare wall, taking out roots, scale and mineral buildup, and the camera checks the result. The liner is cut to length, wet out with resin, and either inverted or winched into place from the cleanout. Air or water pressure keeps it tight to the host during the cure, roughly two to four hours for a house lateral. A robotic cutter then reopens any branch connections from inside, and a final camera pass documents the finished pipe. The floor of the house, whether slab, crawlspace or basement, is never touched, because every step is performed through the cleanout.

What changes once the liner is in

Three things. Sealing: with no joints, roots have nowhere to enter and groundwater has nowhere to seep in, so both the recurring root problem and the damp floor end. Strength: once hardened, the liner carries soil, groundwater and traffic loads on its own, and because it has some give it tolerates the soil movement, expansive clay or freeze-thaw that fractured the brittle original. Flow: the glassy interior passes more water than the corroded pipe it covers, even with a fractionally smaller diameter.

How the resin is cured

Hot-water and steam systems pair a felt tube with polyester or vinyl ester resin and are the usual choice for residential laterals in New York. Ultraviolet systems use a fiberglass tube with a light-activated resin, hardened by a train of UV lamps pulled through the pipe; the cure is quicker and more precisely controlled, which is why UV shows up often on big-diameter and commercial jobs. In either case the proposal should name the tube material, the resin, the design wall thickness and the warranty term.

The file you keep

You should come away with the inspection footage, the footage of the cured liner and the warranty document, and all three belong with the house records. A lined lateral backed by that documentation is a selling point and heads off the question a buyer's inspector or lender is sure to raise. The contractors at verified lining contractors have shown their license, equipment and finished work; the verification process describes what that review covers.

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