Trust the sewer lateral specialists
Trust the Sewer Lateral Specialists
Root infiltration and broken, cracked or collapsed pipe are the two things that put a sewer lateral out of service. We locate it with a camera, then repair the section that actually needs it.
Chapter 01
What the house is telling you
A sewer lateral problem rarely announces itself directly. It shows up as gurgling in toilets, sewer gas odors inside the home or business, slow drains in toilets, tubs and showers all around the same time, sewage backup in toilet stubs, or a foul odor or standing water out in the yard.
Any one of those on its own is worth a call. Two or three at once, especially slow drains in more than one fixture, usually means the problem is the main lateral itself rather than any single drain, and that changes how we come out to look at it. A single slow toilet might just be that toilet. Every drain on the property running slow at the same time is the lateral, and it is worth saying so on the phone before we even load the truck.
Hands clearing tree roots away from newly laid white PVC pipe in an open trench
Root infiltration versus broken, cracked or collapsed pipe
Root infiltration is the more common of the two around here. Roots find a joint, work their way in over years, and eventually fill enough of the pipe to slow or stop everything behind them. The camera shows it clearly, a mass of roots inside the line at a specific joint or crack, and it is usually the older clay pipe with mortared joints that gives them the easiest way in.
Broken, cracked or collapsed pipe is a structural problem rather than an intrusion. Age, ground movement or a heavy load over the line can crack older clay or cast iron pipe outright, and a collapsed section will not carry flow no matter how clear the rest of the line is. The camera tells us which one we are looking at before anyone digs, and it matters, because a root problem and a structural problem are not the same repair even when the symptoms out at the fixture look identical.
Chapter 03
Sewer lateral specialists: spot repair or full replacement
A single root mass or one cracked joint usually means a spot repair, opening just that section and replacing it. A lateral with root infiltration at several points along its run, or pipe that is failing structurally in more than one spot, is a case for full replacement, because chasing individual failures one at a time on an old line rarely stays cheaper than doing the whole run once. We walk through what the camera showed before deciding which one this is, so the call is made from the footage, not from a hunch.
We are the sewer lateral specialists on the job for a reason: the camera decides the repair, not a guess made from the cleanout in the yard. That is the same discipline whether the lateral runs under a front lawn in Gainesville or crosses a driveway on a Cumming lot, the footage tells us where to open the ground before the excavator ever moves.
What the excavation actually looks like on a Gainesville lot
Once the camera has located the failure, the dig opens that section of the lateral, not the whole yard between the house and the street. On most residential lots in Gainesville and the towns around it, that means a trench a few feet long over the exact run the camera identified.
New pipe goes in, the joints get tied in properly, and the line gets tested before the trench closes back over it. The photo here is that last step from a real job, hands clearing roots off new PVC before it goes back in the ground for good, so nothing that caused the original problem ends up buried against the new pipe.
Fortune Plumbing, Family-owned and operated since 1989. Call (770) 532-9489.
The signs that bring us out
Two things break a sewer lateral, and five things tell you it has happened. Any one of the five is worth a call rather than a wait.
What breaks the line
- Root infiltration
- Broken, cracked, or collapsed pipes
What the house does about it
- Gurgling in toilets
- Sewer gas odors inside home or business
- Slow drains toilets, tubs, and showers
- Sewage backup in toilet stubs
- Foul odor or water in the yard