Hydro Jetting in Austintown

A township built in two decades

Austintown was farmland and a crossroads village until the postwar years, when Youngstown's mill workers moved west for a yard and a garage. Most of the township's homes went up between 1950 and 1970 along the grid between Mahoning Avenue, Kirk Road, Raccoon Road and Route 46, with a smaller wave of 1970s and 1980s subdivisions toward Meander Reservoir. The pre-1955 houses sit on vitrified clay laterals. The 1955 to 1970 streets, which are most of Austintown, were built when Orangeburg fiber pipe was the inexpensive standard. Later homes have PVC.

Basements are standard, so the first ten to twenty feet of every building sewer is cast iron through the foundation wall. The oldest of that iron is now scaling and channeling, and a camera that goes in through the basement cleanout sees it before anything else. A full inspection records where the iron ends, what follows it, and how deep the pipe is at the property line.

Clay, frost and the trees from the 1960s

The soil here is glacial till, a dense gray clay that holds water and drains slowly toward Meander Creek and Four Mile Run. In winter the frost line reaches three feet, and the saturated clay expands as it freezes. Each cycle lifts and drops the lateral slightly, and over decades that opens clay joints and crushes Orangeburg from round to oval. The low streets near the creeks also have a high water table, which keeps the trench wet year-round and accelerates both problems.

The developers planted silver maples, Norway maples and pin oaks on nearly every lot, and those trees are now big enough to shade the street. Roots find clay joints and the seam at the foundation. On Orangeburg they push straight through the softened wall. The symptoms are familiar: a floor drain that gurgles, a backup after laundry day, or a line that has been snaked three times in five years.

Which method for which pipe

Cured-in-place pipe lining is the fix for a clay or cast iron lateral that is cracked and rooted but still holds its round shape. After hydro jetting and root cutting, the crew inverts or pulls an epoxy-saturated felt liner into the pipe and cures it with hot water, steam or UV. The liner seals every joint against roots and groundwater and is installed from a single access point.

Deformed Orangeburg has to be burst. The installer opens a launch pit at the house and a receiving pit near the main, pulls a bursting head through the old line, and tows fused HDPE in behind it. Many Austintown laterals get both treatments, with the round cast iron lined and the Orangeburg beyond the wall burst. For a single broken joint or a bad tap at the main on an otherwise sound line, a sectional point repair covers only that spot.

Permits through the county sanitary engineer

Austintown's sanitary sewers belong to the Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer, which issues the lateral permit and inspects either the open pit or the post-installation video. The township permits work in a township road right-of-way, and the county engineer permits county roads such as Mahoning Avenue. The owner is responsible for the lateral all the way to the main, and the contractor normally pulls both permits.

Lining almost never requires the road permit, since it is done from the house end. Bursting with a receiving pit in the tree lawn or pavement does, and that adds restoration conditions and some scheduling time. The inspector will focus on the connection at the main, because leaking laterals are a known source of groundwater in the county system.

Choosing the installer and the job day

A competent crew will camera the line, locate and mark it, record depths, jet it clean and camera it again before deciding on lining or bursting. The liner cures over a few hours with the house unable to drain. Bursting takes a day or two with the pits, and the HDPE is fused on site into one continuous length. Both finish with a video of the completed pipe.

Ask whether the contractor has handled Orangeburg in Austintown, and ask to see the before and after videos, the material spec and the warranty. To compare qualified installers who serve the township, find a verified CIPP contractor and request a camera report from each one before signing a contract.

Hydro Jetting in Austintown

What a jetter does that a cable cannot

A hydro jetter pushes water through a nozzle at several thousand PSI. Rear-facing jets pull the hose down the line and scour everything off the pipe wall: roots, grease, sludge, mineral scale, and the rust flakes inside old cast iron. A cable machine drills a hole through the blockage and leaves the rest on the wall, which is why cabled lines re-clog on a schedule.

Where it fits in a repair

Jetting is step one before lining, because a liner has to bond to clean pipe, and step one before an honest camera inspection, because a line full of roots or scale hides its own condition. It is also legitimate maintenance on its own for a structurally sound line that roots keep finding.

When a line should not be jetted

Cast iron that is paper-thin at the bottom can be opened up by an aggressive descaling pass. A collapsed clay section will not let the hose through. Orangeburg can delaminate under pressure. An experienced operator checks the line first, matches the nozzle to the material, and stops if the pipe is not holding up.

Maintenance versus repair

If the camera shows sound pipe, annual or semiannual jetting is a cheap way to stay ahead of roots. If it shows open joints, channeled cast iron or offsets, jetting is a stopgap and the money is better spent on lining, which removes the joints the roots are using.

More trenchless services in Austintown

Questions we hear in Austintown