Pipe Bursting in Sharonville

Two Sharonvilles, two generations of pipe

The old village grew up where Reading Road crosses Chester Road and the railroad, and the frame houses and brick storefronts there date from the 1880s through the 1930s. Their building sewers are vitrified clay in jointed lengths, often laid shallow and sometimes routed through back yards to an alley main. The postwar growth that turned Sharonville into a city spread north and east toward Kemper Road, Fields Ertel Road and Sharon Woods, with ranches and split-levels from the 1950s and 1960s on clay or Orangeburg and later homes on PVC.

Industrial Sharonville along the I-75 and I-275 corridors brought big employers and big sewer mains, and the residential laterals that tie into those trunk lines can be deeper than usual. A camera inspection with a sonde locator tells the crew not only what the pipe is made of but how deep it is at the property line, which decides whether a pit is practical.

Groundwater, roots and a shallow frost line

The Mill Creek and Sharon Creek run through the low ground, and the soils there are alluvial silt and clay with a water table that comes up to within a few feet of the surface after a wet spring. An old clay lateral with 30 open joints acts like a French drain. The groundwater that flows in through it fills the sewer, and when the main surcharges during a storm the flow reverses. That is the mechanism behind the basement backups that plague the oldest streets.

Higher ground toward Sharon Woods sits on glacial till, which swells and shrinks with moisture and heaves a little each winter when frost reaches about 30 inches. The sycamores along the creeks and the silver maples and pin oaks in the 1960s neighborhoods are the root sources. Roots enter wherever there is a joint or a crack, which on a 70-year-old clay line is every couple of feet.

Picking the method for a wet, rooted lateral

Cured-in-place lining is especially well suited to Sharonville's infiltration problem. After hydro jetting and root cutting, the epoxy-saturated felt liner is inverted or pulled into the clay pipe and cured with hot water, steam or UV. It bonds to the host pipe and seals every joint, so groundwater stays out and sewage stays in. The pipe must still be round for this to work, and the camera confirms that before the liner is ordered.

Where the camera finds a collapse, often under the railroad embankment or a street cut from an old utility repair, that section is beyond lining. Pipe bursting with a fused HDPE replacement is the trenchless fix when the whole run is bad, and a short excavation followed by lining the remainder is the fix when only one spot is bad. A sectional point repair, a few feet of liner over a single broken joint, is often the right call for the alley laterals in the old village where the rest of the pipe is sound.

Permits and the inspection in Sharonville

The Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati issues the building sewer permit and inspects the finished connection or the post-lining video. The City of Sharonville permits any disturbance of the street, sidewalk or tree lawn. Since the owner is responsible for the lateral to the main, both permits are part of the owner's job, and a reputable contractor pulls them and schedules the inspector as part of the work.

Where a lateral crosses railroad property, which happens in the old core, the railroad has its own permission process and timelines. Trenchless methods that avoid opening the ground on railroad land can sidestep that entirely, which is a strong argument for lining over excavation in those few blocks.

What to ask before hiring

On the job day the crew inspects, locates, jets and re-inspects before installing anything. In the wet streets they may pump a pit while they work. The liner cures over a few hours and the final video shows a continuous bore. Ask to see that video and the pre-inspection one, and ask for the liner's written material specification and warranty.

Because infiltration is the big issue here, ask each contractor how their liner handles the lateral-to-main connection, since an unsealed end is where groundwater sneaks back in. To find and compare qualified installers for a Sharonville home, find a verified CIPP contractor and get a camera report from each one before choosing.

Pipe Bursting in Sharonville

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.

More trenchless services in Sharonville

Questions we hear in Sharonville