Hey guys, I'm Roger Wakefield, LEED AP, The Expert Plumber.
This morning we're talking about how to repair a sewer leak.
Now, if you've seen some of the other videos you know that first of all you have to locate
that sewer leak and there's a lot of different steps to go through.
But repairing a sewer leak, especially under a house is a huge deal.
The things that you got to look at first of all is what options do you have?
And before you do, and we've talked about this in other videos, but before you do the
repair you have to do the isolation.
You start with the test, then you do the isolation, then you get to the leak repair.
Now, the good thing I like tell people: look you've always got options and options are
a great thing especially in a situation like this.
If you have one leak, you may be able to actually just make a whole right there in the floor
and take care of it right there.
If you have multiple leaks and you're going to require tunneling, it may be better to
go in from outside, make an access hole, tunnel over to the repairs or the section of pipe
or whatever and do the repair that way.
The good thing about that and what we like about that option is it's non-invasive.
There's not going to be a big pile of dirt in your living room or a closet or a bedroom
or anything like that.
Literally we go outside we dig the access hole - trust me there will be a mound of dirt
outside, I've actually saying piles of dirt up you know five six feet tall.
We try to protect your grass, we try to protect your flowerbeds, we try to protect everything
that we can but it's still a lot of dirt and all that dirt is coming out.
The thing is to get into the point where the leak is make that repair, test it and then
get out.
Now you also run into the problem: what if I have multiple leaks in multiple areas?
Guys we've literally gone in and done whole house repipes, converted things from cast
iron to PVC, that's not a bad decision.
If you've got multiple leaks chances are you're going to have multiple more later.
Either the house has shifted, the soils in your area aren't real good or aren't compatible
with the cast iron pipe that you have.
But guys, we've also seen this problem with PVC.
We actually did a leak test two days ago or an isolation test, and it's a PVC system and
there's like five different breaks in five different areas.
Now there's one other area that runs off to I guess a branch line that goes upstairs to
a restroom.
That's OK, that can save this homeowner you know, 30, 40 feet a sewer line or so a replacement
and that's a big deal because that is expensive tunnel work.
You know it takes a crew to come in with the right tools and when I say a tunnel it's not
just a hole big enough to crawl in my dig crews literally dig a 3 foot wide by 3 foot
deep hole.
You've got to have room to get in there work move around and work safely and normally there's
multiple people in there.
So you want to make sure that you've got things dug out to where you can get in there get
good access to what you need, and another big thing guys, is if you have a plumber come
in and guys please check references on them, please look at reviews, please look at what
other people are saying about these plumbing companies because I've seen people do five
and ten thousand dollars worth of repairs and then we get called back to come in and
look and they've dug about three feet under the house and replaced two feet of pipe and
used the wrong materials.
You want to make sure that they're using shear bands, shear couplings.
It's a CT adaptor with a stainless steel band around it.
Fantastic.
It keeps the pipe from offsetting later.
The other things is stainless steel.
You want to make sure that the hangers, the rods.
Anything you can get under their stainless steel.
It's gonna last longer if you just go on with galvanized rod, galvanized hangers, it oxidizes.
With the moisture and oxygen and all that in the ground it oxidizes, it rots out.
We always put in a hanger system so if the House moves a little bit it kind of pulls
that pipe with it.
So you know doing things right is huge.
Now the other option would be a reroute.
Now what you can do on a sewer line is say you've got a leak on an exterior wall or just
inside of an exterior wall, and we've done this before, maybe you go when you tunnel
up under there you reroute that line down, around come outside and reroute it around
to the front or the back of the house, where the two way clean-outs are or where your sewer
main is that way, if that section of say you've got a leak on an exterior wall and that section
of pipe goes in quite a ways and it's rotting out, you'll still want to find a way to cap
that off but you may want to reroute that around instead of going in and doing all the
work along that line.
And guys buyers and sellers look at things like this.
They come in and they the buyer should come in and do a sewer/water test on every house
they do and probably even a sewer/water/camera and a gas test but a seller only wants to
do: if you're coming in and doing a sewer test and there's a leak under the house all
they want repaired is what they have to to make sure there's not a leak.
That is legal.
"Hey I repaired the leaks.
It's good at this point."
Problem is like I told you, if you're repairing sewer leaks under the house, chances are you're
going to have more in the near future.
That isn't just a miraculous leak that occurred.
It could be due to foundation issues but there's other things to look at.
Now my question is people say: well why would I want to pay more to a tunnel to get to an
area?
It may cost you more on my, on the plumber's end.
But the truth is if we go through the floor, now you're looking at you're going to have
to replace flooring if you've got hardwood floors that can't be matched.
You're going to be replacing a lot of flooring.
So there's a lot of different options.
But remember, you're also going to have a big pile of dirt right in the middle of your
living room.
So it's all about customer convenience for us.
We want to put you in the best situation to make sure that no one are happy.
Number two you're getting well taken care of.
But number three you're not really inconvenienced.
Yes having a leak under your house is bad and you may have to go, you know, we're going
to have a dig crew in there for a day or two, we're going to have plumbers and there for
a day or two, we have to shut your system down for a day to get it inspected, we're
going to have an engineer come out and - we like to bring a structural engineer out to
test the tunnel to make sure that what we've done can never cause foundation issues to
your house, and guys we get all these reports and a lot of people don't.
So be very specific and very picky about the plumbers that you pick.
Make sure you get good ones.
Another thing is be cognizant of the time that it's going to take.
It may take an entire week to go in and do one little repair.
And if we're going to be at your house for a week you probably want us to work outside
and tunnel on in instead of in the middle of your living room, you know, all day everyday.
So guys there's a lot of different things to look at a lot of different things to ask
questions about.
I hope that you're enjoying these videos.
If if you've ever had this happen to you do me a favor leave me a comment and tell me
how they repaired your house.
Because that would be really cool.
So hope you're enjoying these videos.
Leave us some comments.
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Guys my name's Roger Wakefield with Texas Green Plumbing.
Saving you money, one drop at a time.