Sewer Line Repair & Replacement in Phoenix

Sewer Line Repair in Phoenix

The sewer line is the one pipe every drain in your house depends on, and it's also the one you never see. When it fails, everything backs up at once. Phoenix has a lot of homes from the 60s through the 90s with clay or cast iron sewer laterals, and a lot of mature trees whose roots have spent decades finding the joints. Add ground movement and the occasional contractor who buried the line without enough slope, and sewer work is a regular part of what we do.

This is our specialty. Kenneth has been repairing and replacing sewer lines in Phoenix for more than three decades, and we do the whole job with our own crew: the digging, the pipe, the connection to the city tap, and putting your yard, driveway or slab back the way it was.

Signs Your Sewer Line Is Failing

• More than one drain in the house is slow or backing up at the same time
• Gurgling from a toilet or tub when another fixture drains
• Sewage smell in the yard or a patch of grass that's suddenly greener and softer
• Water backing up into the lowest drain (a shower or a floor drain) when you run the washer
• Repeated main-line clogs that a snake clears for a few months at a time
• A depression or sinkhole forming in the yard along the line's path

Free Sewer Camera Inspection

Before we recommend anything, we run a camera through the line and record it. You'll see what we see: roots, a belly holding water, an offset joint, a crack, a collapsed section. The camera also has a locator, so we can mark exactly where the problem is and how deep, which is what lets us quote the job accurately instead of guessing. The camera inspection is free with any drain cleaning service and is the first step of every sewer repair estimate.

Repair vs. Replace

A single cracked or root-invaded section can often be spot-repaired: we excavate at that point, cut out the bad pipe, and splice in new. A line with problems in several places, a collapsed section, or a belly that spans a long run is usually a replacement. Depending on the pipe's condition and what's above it, replacement can be done trenchless (see our trenchless page) or by conventional excavation. We'll lay out both, with prices, and tell you which one we'd choose for our own house.

How We Do the Work

Locate and mark the line and any utilities. Excavate to the pipe by hand or machine depending on access. Cut out the failed section or the full run and install new SDR-35 or Schedule 40 PVC with proper slope, bedded correctly so it doesn't settle. Tie in at the house and at the city tap. Test the line, camera it one more time so you can see the finished pipe, and backfill in lifts. Then the finish work: sod, gravel, concrete or pavers restored. You should be able to look at the yard a month later and not tell where we were.

What Affects the Cost

Depth of the line, length of the run, what's on top of it (grass is easy, a driveway or slab is not), whether we're spot-repairing or replacing, and whether trenchless is an option. We give a firm written quote after the camera inspection, and it doesn't change unless we hit something the camera couldn't show, in which case we stop and talk to you first.