Drain Repair Techniques

Drain Repair Works There was a time when your only option when it came to drain repair was an excavation however the development of drain camera inspection systems over the years has led to the plethora of no-dig solutions.

The drain repair method that suits your system will depend on the actual cause of the damage, the severity of the damage and the available access into the system, there are scenarios where a system can be repaired without any disruption at all but in reality we tend to use a combination of excavation and no-dig repairs particularly on domestic systems.

A detailed camera inspection is usually the first step to assess the condition of the system and the extent of any damage, from this your contractor will decide which of the following methods can be used.

Drain Excavation and Repair

It pains me to say this but there are occasions when the only answer is to excavate and repair a broken drain, if there is a complete collapse on the vitrified clay drain that a drain jetter can not shift then its time to get the shovels out and dig. Other scenarios such as severe displacement of drain joints or severe fractures can put a system beyond a drain lining method as the repair moulds itself to the host pipe.

You can read more here on drain excavation works

Drain Lining, Drain Re-Lining, Cipp Lining

There are several methods for lining drains but you are basically putting a fibre glass pipe inside the existing drain or sewer, as mentioned above most of these system mould themselves to the host pipe so any degree of deformity in the host pipe has to be assessed.This is a great way to repair root damaged, fractured or leaking pipe work where nominal displacement or movement has occurred

You can read more here on drain lining techniques

Drain Patch Liners, Spot Repairs or Local Patch Repairs

These are small sections of drain liner that can be installed part way down a system to target specific defects such as a single fracture, root damaged or stepped joint, they also enable you to repair defects between live connections without having to re-open the connection with a robotic cutter afterwards. The inflation method on these repairs differs from standard drain liners so this repair can in affect iron out a step joint against the flow of a system to some degree.

You can read more on here on drain patch repairs

Pitch Fibre Re-Rounding

Pitch Fibre (also known as drainman’s gold) is a shocking product that was thankfully only used for a few years before plastic pipe work became widely available, pitch fibre deforms, de-laminates and blisters to the point of collapse. If caught early enough it can be re-rounded using winching equipment prior to being relined

You can read more here on pitch fibre pipe work and its repair

Pipe Bursting

This method is more commonly used in the gas and water supply industry and it involves winching a bursting head through an existing pipe, the internal pressure from the bursting head splits the host pipe and a new plastic pipe is dragged through behind it.

If you have a defective drain or drain liner that you can get a line through then this method can be used to rectify it, another plus for this method is that you can increase the host pipe size by 50% on each pull through if required