Trenchless Sewer Repair in Lakewood

Lakewood is the textbook example of the postwar American tract city. Between 1950 and 1953, crews moving down the streets in assembly-line fashion put up more than seventeen thousand homes on what had been bean fields, and the city incorporated in 1954 before the paint was dry on the last of them. The houses were built from a small catalog of floor plans, set on slab foundations, with sewer laterals laid the same way lot after lot. That uniformity made Lakewood affordable and famous. Seventy-plus years later, it also means the sewer pipes under those homes are failing in a remarkably predictable pattern.

If you own a home in one of the original tracts, your lateral is the same age, the same material, and nearly the same configuration as thousands of others. The fixes that worked for your neighbors will almost certainly apply to you. Trenchless sewer repair is well suited to Lakewood's compact lots and short lateral runs, and the Lakewood sewer lateral service information covers the local service area. The rest of this page explains the specifics.

Lakewood's pipe and housing conditions

The original tracts, which make up most of the city between Del Amo Boulevard and Carson Street and from the San Gabriel River west toward Long Beach, share a few constants. Foundations are slab-on-grade. Drain lines under the slab are cast iron, which corrodes from the inside, loses wall thickness along the bottom where water runs, and eventually develops holes. The lateral from the slab edge to the street main is a short run, usually under a small front lawn and a sidewalk, made of either vitrified clay in short mortared segments or Orangeburg fiber pipe. Which one you have depends on what was delivered that week in 1951.

Lakewood's soil is flat alluvial plain with sandy and silty layers and a relatively shallow water table. It does not heave the way expansive clays do, but it settles, and seventy years of settlement has left many laterals with slight bellies that trap solids. Street trees were planted at the same time as the houses, so the magnolias, camphors, and liquidambars are now fully mature with root systems that reach any leaking joint. Root intrusion into clay and the slow collapse of Orangeburg account for most of the service calls in the original tracts. Later subdivisions on the city's edges from the 1960s and 1970s shift toward clay and then ABS, with fewer Orangeburg problems but still aging cast iron under slabs.

Which trenchless method fits which problem

The first step is always hydro jetting to clear roots and scale, followed by a camera inspection recorded from the cleanout to the main. What the camera shows determines the method.

• CIPP lining fits clay laterals with cracked segments, leaking joints, and root intrusion, provided the pipe still holds its round shape. A resin-saturated liner is installed and cured in place, producing a jointless pipe inside the old one. For more on how liners are built and cured, learn how cured-in-place liners work is a good starting point.
• Pipe bursting is the standard choice for Orangeburg and for any lateral that has collapsed or ovaled. The straight, short runs in Lakewood tracts are ideal for it, with one pit near the foundation and one at the sidewalk.
• Sectional point repair addresses an isolated defect, such as a single crushed segment under the driveway apron, without treating the full length.
• Spin-cast lining rehabilitates cast-iron drains under the slab and larger lines serving the commercial corridors along Lakewood Boulevard and around the mall, applying a structural coating from inside the pipe.

For a closer look at the method itself, epoxy liner installation in detail covers the materials, the cure, and where lining fits.

Permits, utilities, and inspections

Lakewood issues permits for sewer lateral work through its Community Development and Public Works functions, and the connection at the main is inspected when work reaches the right-of-way. The property owner is responsible for the lateral from the house to the main, including the segment under the sidewalk and parkway. The contractor calls DigAlert, the regional 811 service, before any pit is opened so that gas, water, electric, and communications lines are marked. Lakewood does not require a point-of-sale sewer inspection, but buyers' inspectors in the city routinely ask for lateral camera footage.

What to expect from an estimate visit

A good estimate visit is mostly inspection. The installer locates the cleanouts, runs the camera, and shows you the footage with distances and depths marked. You should leave with a written scope that names one method, states the length of pipe involved, shows where any pits or new cleanouts will go, and spells out restoration of lawn and concrete. Even though Lakewood homes repeat the same plans, the footage is still what the recommendation should rest on.

Trenchless Sewer Repair in Lakewood

What "trenchless" actually covers

Trenchless sewer repair is not one method. It is a family of ways to fix or replace a buried sewer line from inside the pipe or through one or two small access pits, instead of opening a trench along its whole length. The two that do most of the work on residential lines are cured-in-place pipe lining, which rebuilds the pipe from inside, and pipe bursting, which replaces it along the same path. Sectional point repair handles a single bad spot, and spray-applied lining handles cast iron with too many bends for a felt liner.

How the method gets chosen

Every one of them starts the same way: a camera inspection that shows what the pipe is made of, where it fails, how deep it is, and whether it still holds its shape and slope. A line that is round and holding grade can be lined. A collapsed or bellied line cannot; it gets burst or replaced. One crushed joint on an otherwise sound line gets a point repair. The footage decides, and you should be shown it before anyone quotes a price.

When trenchless is the wrong answer

A lateral that has been undersized from the start, a run that crosses a foundation footing within inches, or a line with a long stretch that has lost all grade may be better served by spot excavation or a new route by directional bore. An honest contractor says so. The point of trenchless is not to avoid digging at any cost; it is to avoid digging that does not need to happen.

What to expect on the day

Cleaning with a hydro jetter, a camera pass, the repair itself, a post-repair camera pass, and, where the work touched the right-of-way, a city inspection. Most residential jobs are done in one day with water off for a few hours. The permit is the contractor's job; ask who is pulling it.

More trenchless services in Lakewood

Questions we hear in Lakewood