Pipe Bursting in Anaheim

The flats and the Hills

Most of Anaheim west of the 57 freeway was built between 1950 and 1965, when the citrus groves came out and the tracts went in around the theme park, the stadium and the freeways. Those houses, in the neighborhoods around Downtown Anaheim, West Anaheim, the Colony and the streets south of Ball Road, were plumbed with vitrified clay laterals in short jointed lengths, some under raised floors and many under early slab foundations with cast iron beneath the house. The downtown core around the Anaheim Colony is older still, with 1900s to 1930s houses on the oldest clay in the city. Anaheim Hills, built from the 1970s through the 1990s on the slopes east of the river, is almost entirely slab-on-grade with cast iron in the first tracts and ABS plastic after that.

The failures follow the pipe. Clay joints admit roots and shift with the soil. Cast iron under a slab channels out along the bottom over forty years, so the camera sees a clean crown and misses a pipe that is nearly gone underneath. ABS cracks at fittings, gets crushed under a widened driveway, or bellies where hillside fill settled.

Expansive clay, hillside fill, big trees

The flats are alluvial soil with a lot of clay that swells in the winter rains and shrinks all summer, and sixty years of that cycle has opened joints and offset pipe under half the tracts in the city. In the Hills the laterals run through engineered fill on slopes that settle and creep, which produces bellies and sheared joints where the pipe leaves the compacted pad. Anaheim's parkway trees, the ficus, liquidambar, carob and pepper trees planted with the tracts, are now mature, and root intrusion at clay joints is the single most common finding on an Anaheim sewer camera inspection.

Sewers and permits

The City of Anaheim operates the local sewer system, and the lateral from the house to the connection at the main is the property owner's responsibility, including the part under the parkway and sidewalk.

Lateral repair or replacement needs a plumbing permit from the city, and anything in the sidewalk, parkway or street needs an encroachment permit and an inspection before the pit is closed. The contractor should pull both and say so in the quote.

Which trenchless method fits an Anaheim lateral

• Sewer pipe lining fits the flats: clay with root-intruded joints and small offsets that still holds shape and slope. It is also the fix for channeled cast iron under a Hills slab, without breaking the floor. A cured-in-place liner from the cleanout seals every joint and crack in one pass.
• Pipe bursting fits a collapsed section, a belly in hillside fill, or a line that needs to be upsized. Two small pits and a new fused polyethylene pipe on the old alignment.
• Sectional point repair handles one crushed joint under a driveway or one root ball on an otherwise sound line.

Crews that handle trenchless sewer repair in Anaheim see both kinds of Anaheim lateral every week, and a good one will tell you which you have before quoting a method.

What the job looks like

A camera inspection maps the line and marks every defect on the ground with its depth. Hydro jetting clears roots, scale and grease so the pipe wall can be seen and, if the line is being lined, so the resin bonds to clean pipe. Lining runs from the cleanout at the house; bursting needs a small pit at each end of the run. Most residential jobs finish in a day, with water off for a few hours during a liner cure, and you should receive the before-and-after footage. how a trenchless repair is sequenced from inspection to cure is worth reading before the crew arrives.

To compare installers who have been checked for licensing and CIPP training, you can find a verified CIPP contractor through an independent directory.

Pipe Bursting in Anaheim

How pipe bursting works

A steel cable is threaded through the old sewer line from a pit at one end to a pit at the other. A cone-shaped bursting head, with new high-density polyethylene pipe fused to it, is pulled through by a hydraulic unit. The head splits the old clay or cast iron outward into the soil and the new pipe follows in the same alignment at the same depth. The result is a single fused length of pipe with no joints for roots to find.

When bursting is the right call

• Collapsed sections — a liner needs a host pipe to hold its shape; a collapsed run has none.
• Bellies — a low spot that holds water stays a low spot after lining. Bursting lays new pipe on a fresh bed.
• Undersized lines — bursting can upsize a 3-inch lateral to 4 inches; lining slightly reduces diameter.
• Badly deformed pipe — Orangeburg that has flattened, or cast iron with most of its bottom gone.

What the job looks like

One pit at the house or cleanout, one at the property line or the street connection, each a few feet square. Utilities that cross within a foot or two of the sewer path are located and potholed first. The pull takes an hour or two; the whole job, including fusing, connections, inspection and backfill, is usually one day.

Permits and the street

If the downstream pit is in the sidewalk, parkway or street, a right-of-way permit and restoration to city standards are required in addition to the plumbing permit. If the connection at the main is replaced, the city inspects it before the pit closes. Confirm who is handling this before work starts.

ZIP codes served in Anaheim

Pipe Bursting is available throughout Anaheim, including ZIP codes 92801, 92802, 92803, 92804, 92805, 92806, 92807, 92808, 92809, 92812, 92814, 92815, 92816, 92817, 92825, 92850, 92899.

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Questions we hear in Anaheim