Water-Service and Sewer-Line Repairs

A water service loses pressure everywhere at once, not at one fixture. If the kitchen tap and the upstairs shower both dropped off over the same few months, that points at the service rather than an aerator or a cartridge. The other tells are a meter that keeps counting with the whole building shut off, a damp patch on the basement floor where the service comes through the wall, a strip of lawn that stays green through a dry August, and a hiss at the main shut-off when nothing is running.

A sewer lateral is less subtle. Repeat backups, particularly after heavy rain or during spring melt, are the common one. So are gurgling fixtures, sewer gas in the basement, a depression or a sinkhole appearing along the run of the pipe, and one narrow strip of lawn growing better than everything around it because roots have found something to feed on.

None of this is proof on its own. One slow fixture is a fixture problem, not a lateral problem, and a wet basement floor can just as easily be groundwater. The point of the list is to tell you when the buried line is worth ruling in or out before you spend money elsewhere.

For a sewer lateral, that means a camera. We clear enough of the line to get the head through, then run a CCTV camera with a sonde and trace it from the surface, so the defect carries a position and a depth before any quote is written. Roots at a joint, an offset where a section has dropped, a belly holding water, a fracture, a full collapse: five different repairs at five different prices, and the camera is what separates them.

For a water service there is nothing to put a camera into, so the work is acoustic and electronic. Ground microphones on a pressurized line, a tracing signal to establish route and depth, and meter isolation to confirm the loss is on the service and not inside the building. Before any excavation, public utility locates go in through Ontario One Call, because gas, hydro and telecom often share the same boulevard.

There is a limit to what this tells you. A camera reads condition where the lens is pointed, and a line packed with roots hides the pipe behind them. A locate gives a good position, not a millimetre. We say so up front rather than after the ground is open.

Open-cut is what it sounds like: excavate to the pipe, cut out the failed section or the whole run, install new, backfill and compact. Everything is visible, which makes it the most certain method, and it is often right for a spot repair or a shallow line clear of obstructions.

Trenchless has its place. Pipe bursting pulls a new HDPE line along the path of the old one between an entry pit and an exit pit, which can save a driveway or a mature tree. Cured-in-place lining rehabilitates the pipe from the inside. Both have conditions: lining needs a host pipe that is still structurally continuous, so a collapse rules it out, and lining a sag does not remove the sag. Anyone recommending trenchless without watching the video first is guessing.

Then the paperwork and the surface. This work needs a plumbing permit, and anything entering the municipal right-of-way brings road occupancy and street-cut requirements, city-controlled shut-off at the curb stop, and restoration of road, curb and sidewalk on the city's terms rather than ours. Landscaping, fences, interlock and driveways get disturbed, and they are quoted separately from the plumbing.

Scope on buried work is provisional until the line is exposed. We quote what the camera and the locate support. If the pipe a metre past the repair is in the same condition as the piece we just removed, we stop, show you, and price the change before carrying on.