Pipe Bursting in Pickerington

A village core and a very large plastic ring

Olde Pickerington Village, the few blocks around Columbus Street and Center Street, is the only part of the city with laterals that predate the 1970s. Those are vitrified clay in short jointed lengths with cast iron at the foundation, and a few postwar houses may carry Orangeburg fiber pipe. They behave like old laterals anywhere in central Ohio: root intrusion at the joints and a leak at the cast iron transition.

Everything else is new. Pickerington grew from a village of a few thousand to a city many times that size between about 1985 and 2010, with subdivisions filling the land along Refugee Road, Hill Road, Diley Road and out toward Violet Township. Those houses have PVC laterals end to end, usually solvent-welded with gasketed couplings at the transitions. The result is a city where root problems are rare and the trenchless work is mostly about plastic pipe that moved after it was buried.

Fairfield County clay, Sycamore Creek and fast construction

Pickerington sits on glacial till that is heavy clay drained by Sycamore Creek and its tributaries. The ground is nearly flat, the water table is high in spring, and clay backfill settles for years after a trench is closed. During the boom, lots were graded, trenched and built quickly, and a lateral buried in that spoil follows every bit of settlement. The common camera findings are a belly holding water and a coupling that pulled apart where the trench moved.

Frost compounds it close to the house. The frost line is roughly 30 to 36 inches, and the shallow run near the foundation heaves each winter, loosening the transition fitting between the interior cast iron or ABS and the exterior PVC. A separated joint there lets fine clay wash in, and the camera shows soil in the pipe or a drop at the joint.

Mechanical damage is the third category. Patios and driveways added later are sometimes poured over a trench that had not settled, and fence posts, deck piers or utility bores occasionally hit the pipe. In the old village blocks and the earliest plats, the silver maples and pin oaks planted in the 1970s are now large enough to find any open clay joint.

The right method for each kind of damage

For a separated joint, a crack or a short run of damaged pipe, a sectional point repair is often the best answer in Pickerington. A short liner is positioned over the bad spot and cured in place, with no digging and the rest of the sound PVC left alone.

Full cured-in-place lining is used when there are several defects along the run, or on the old clay laterals in the village. After hydro jetting, a felt tube saturated with epoxy resin is inverted or pulled through and cured with hot water, steam or UV light. The liner seals every joint and crack into one continuous pipe. It will not remove a belly, since it follows the host pipe, so the installer checks the depth of any sag before recommending it.

Pipe bursting is reserved for a crushed section, a belly deep enough to trap solids, or a collapse. A pit is dug near the house and another near the main, a bursting head is winched through, and fused HDPE follows. The new pipe is set at a corrected grade between the pits, which solves the belly rather than hiding it. Wet clay pits need shoring and sometimes a pump.

Permits and inspection in Pickerington

Pickerington operates its own wastewater treatment plant as well as its collection system. A lateral repair needs a permit from the city, and the inspector will view the connection at the main before a pit is backfilled or review the post-lining camera video. Work under the sidewalk or street requires a right-of-way permit. Properties in Violet Township outside the city limits may be served by Fairfield County, in which case the county sanitary engineer handles the permit.

In most communities in central Ohio the owner is responsible for the whole lateral to the main. Keep the camera video; it documents the repair for any future sale.

What to expect on the day and how to pick an installer

The crew will camera the lateral, locate it across the yard, and mark the depth at the house and at the property line. A point repair or lining finishes in a day with a few hours of no water use. Bursting runs into a second morning for inspection and backfill.

Compare installers on the camera video, the liner specification, and the written warranty. To compare installers who are vetted on those points, find a verified CIPP contractor and ask how they would handle a belly in a 1990s PVC lateral, which is the common Pickerington case.

Pipe Bursting in Pickerington

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.

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