Pipe Bursting 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.

Pipe Bursting in Austintown

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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