Sewer Systems

Each time you flush the toilet or wash something down the drain, you create sewage, also known as wastewater. It contains all the deject you see as well as all the harmful bacteria that you don’t. Human waste naturally contains coliform bacteria – for example, E. coli – and other bacteria that can cause diseases.

Once water becomes infected with these bacteria, it becomes a health hazard. It contains suspended solids and chemicals that affect the environment and can be very harmful to anyone in contact with it, so next time you need a new sewer line or repairs to an existing system, don’t touch the poo. Call us and we will touch it for you.

See also gray water systems for a greener version of a sewer system.

The lateral is yours, and that surprises most owners

The pipe running from your house to the city main is the sewer lateral, and on most properties the owner is responsible for it, frequently all the way to the connection at the main.

That means a failure in the street can still be your repair. It is worth knowing which jurisdiction you are in and where their responsibility begins, before you need the answer.

What actually fails

• Root intrusion. Roots find the joints in older clay pipe and grow into them. This is the most common cause of a backed-up lateral in an older neighborhood

• Clay pipe joints, which were never watertight to begin with and separate as the ground moves

• Cast iron, which corrodes and scales until the opening closes

• Bellies. A section that has sagged so waste sits in it instead of running through

• Offsets and collapses, where ground movement has pulled a joint apart

• On expansive clay soils, all of the above accelerate, because the ground around the pipe moves seasonally

Find out before you dig

A camera inspection is the difference between a diagnosis and a guess, and it is cheap relative to any repair.

It tells you what the problem is, exactly how far from the house it is, and how deep. Those three facts decide which repair applies and what it costs. Digging without them is how a spot repair turns into a trench.

If you are buying a property built before the 1970s, a lateral camera inspection is one of the highest-value inspections available and one of the least commonly ordered.

The repair options, cheapest to most involved

1. Clearing and root cutting. Restores flow and does not fix the cause. Appropriate as maintenance, not as a solution

2. Spot repair. Excavating and replacing a defined failed section. The right answer for a single offset or collapse

3. Trenchless lining. A liner cured in place inside the existing pipe. Avoids the trench, and needs the existing pipe to be intact enough to line

4. Pipe bursting. Pulls a new pipe through the old one, fracturing it outward. Works where lining will not

5. Full replacement by open trench. The most disruptive, and sometimes the only option where the line has collapsed or the grade has to be corrected

Any of them is permitted work and inspected. And where the line runs under a street or sidewalk, the work in the public right of way carries its own separate permit from a different department.

Septic is a different conversation

Large parts of unincorporated Riverside County are on septic rather than sewer, and that changes everything from maintenance to what you are allowed to add to the property. It is the single most common obstacle to adding a dwelling unit: building an ADU in Temecula and Murrieta.

Start with a free 15-minute call

Tell us roughly when the house was built, whether backups are getting more frequent, whether it is one fixture or the whole house, and whether there are large trees between the house and the street. In fifteen minutes we can usually tell you whether a camera inspection is the right next step.

Call (323) 707-4979 to book the free 15-minute consultation.

The Ultimate Pro, Inc. CA License 831700, Class B General Building. Serving Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties since 1996.

Plumbing hidden behind a wall is the expensive kind to guess at. Book a free 15-minute call or call (323) 707-4979 and describe the symptom. We will tell you what usually causes it and what it takes to confirm.

There is usually a video for this. X Plan Nation is our construction channel on YouTube, run by the same team that would build your project and made to explain the trades to the person paying for them.

The Ultimate Pro, Inc. · California contractor license 831700 · Class B general building · 18481 Grand Avenue, Lake Elsinore, CA 92530 · Serving Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County and the Inland Empire since 1996.