Pipe Bursting in Hilliard

Old Hilliard clay and the newer plastic ring

Hilliard's oldest sewer connections are around Old Hilliard, the few blocks of Main Street, Norwich Street and the rail corridor where houses date from the 1880s through the 1950s. Those laterals are vitrified clay in short jointed lengths with cast iron through the foundation wall. A handful of postwar houses on the fringe of the old village may have Orangeburg fiber pipe, installed in central Ohio until about 1970.

The 1960s and 1970s plats east of Old Hilliard, between Cemetery Road and Scioto Darby Road, were the first wave of suburban growth and were split between clay and early plastic depending on the builder. From the mid 1980s on, the big subdivisions that define Hilliard today, including Heritage Lakes, the plats along Davidson Road and Leap Road, and the newer sections toward Alton Darby Creek Road and the Brown Township edge, are PVC end to end.

That makes Hilliard an unusual trenchless market. Root intrusion is a problem only in the old core. Everywhere else the camera finds plastic pipe laid in bad ground.

Flat wet clay and what it does to a plastic lateral

Hilliard sits on glacial till that is almost pure clay, drained by Scioto Darby Creek and a web of ditches that were dug when this was farmland. The water table is high in spring and the ground has very little natural slope. A lateral trench cut in that clay and backfilled with the same spoil settles for years, and a PVC pipe follows the settlement into a belly, a section below grade that holds water and catches solids.

The second common failure is a separated joint. Solvent-welded PVC holds well, but gasketed couplings and the transition fitting at the cast iron stub pull apart when the trench moves. Frost adds to this near the house, where the shallow run sits inside the 30 to 36 inch frost zone. The third is mechanical damage: a driveway poured before the trench settled, a fence post driven through the pipe, or a cable bore that nicked it.

Where the old clay lines survive, the roots of silver maples and pin oaks along the older streets find the joints that a half century of frost has opened.

The right trenchless method for each finding

Cured-in-place lining is the all-purpose repair for a pipe that is still round. After hydro jetting, a felt tube saturated with epoxy resin is inverted or pulled into the lateral and cured with hot water, steam or UV. It seals separated joints, cracks and root entries in a single continuous pipe. On an old clay lateral in Old Hilliard it is the usual answer. On a PVC line it works equally well, though it will not remove a belly, since the liner takes the shape of the host.

A sectional point repair is a short liner set over one bad joint. For a 1990s Hilliard lateral with one dropped coupling and good pipe on either side, it is faster than a full lining and avoids any digging.

Pipe bursting is reserved for a collapsed or crushed section, a severe offset the camera cannot pass, or a belly deep enough that the pipe needs regrading. Two pits are dug, a bursting head is pulled through the old line, and fused HDPE follows on a corrected grade. In Hilliard's wet clay the pits need shoring and sometimes a pump.

Permits, the right-of-way and inspection in Hilliard

Hilliard runs its own sanitary collection system, with treatment handled downstream by Columbus. A lateral repair requires a permit from the city, and the inspector will either view the connection at the main before a pit is backfilled or review the post-lining camera video. Work in the sidewalk or street needs a separate right-of-way permit and must follow the city's pavement restoration standards. Addresses in Brown or Norwich Township outside the city may fall under the Franklin County Sanitary Engineer instead.

In most communities around Columbus the owner is responsible for the whole lateral to the main, so the video that locates the defect matters.

The day of the job and choosing an installer

The crew will camera the line, locate it across the lawn, and mark depth at the house and the property line. Lining wraps in a day with a few hours of no water use; bursting leaves the pits open through the afternoon and the lawn patched the next morning.

Compare installers on their pre and post camera video, their liner and resin specification, and the warranty they put in writing. To compare installers who are vetted on those points, find a verified CIPP contractor and ask how they would treat a settled PVC lateral in Hilliard clay, since that is the typical job here.

Pipe Bursting in Hilliard

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.

ZIP codes served in Hilliard

Pipe Bursting is available throughout Hilliard, including ZIP codes 43026.

More trenchless services in Hilliard

Questions we hear in Hilliard