Sectional Point Repair in Cortland

Village clay and lakeside PVC

Cortland began as a village on the railroad north of Warren, and the houses along Main Street, High Street, and the blocks around the old center date from the 1880s through the 1920s. Those homes have vitrified clay laterals in short jointed lengths with cast iron through the foundation. After Mosquito Lake was created in the 1940s and Route 5 and Route 11 made the commute easy, ranches and colonials filled the plats off Niles-Cortland Road and along the lake through the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. The postwar homes have clay or, in some 1950s builds, Orangeburg; the plats from the mid-1970s on have PVC.

A number of lakeside properties were on septic systems for decades and were tied into sewers later. Those connections deserve a careful camera look, since the tie-in to the new main was sometimes made with mixed materials and the old septic line may still be connected.

Wet clay, the lake, and roots

The soil around Cortland is glacial till with heavy clay, flat and slow to drain, and the water table near the lake and the creeks feeding it rises close to the surface each spring. A clay lateral with open joints becomes a drain for the yard, pulling in groundwater and silt that settles in low spots. Frost reaches roughly three feet and heaves the shallow run near the house every winter, opening the first few joints. In the PVC plats the main problem is settlement: trenches backfilled with wet till sink unevenly, leaving bellies where water stands.

Willows, silver maples, and sycamores thrive in the wet ground here and send roots into any weeping joint. In the old village core the camera usually shows roots at most joints along the whole run. Cortland's sanitary sewers are separate from storm drainage, so a basement backup is usually a lateral blockage rather than a surcharged main, though the system can still be overloaded in a wet spring by laterals that leak.

The right fix for each kind of pipe

For the clay laterals in the center of town, cured-in-place lining is the usual answer. After a camera inspection and hydro jetting, the installer inverts an epoxy-saturated felt liner from the basement cleanout and cures it with hot water, steam, or UV. The liner seals every joint, stops the groundwater, and keeps roots out. For a PVC lateral with one separated joint, a sectional point repair cured over that joint is the better value than lining the full run.

Pipe bursting is the method when the camera cannot pass: a collapsed clay bell, a joint offset more than a third of the diameter, or a belly deep enough to hold standing water. The bursting head is pulled from a pit near the main to a pit at the house while fused HDPE follows. Near the lake the pits fill with groundwater quickly, so the crew should plan for a pump. Bursting can also upsize a lateral for a lake house that has grown from a cottage into a year-round home with more fixtures.

Permits in the city and around the lake

Inside Cortland, the city issues the permit for lateral work and inspects it, reviewing the post-cure video for a liner or the connection before backfill for a bursting job. Any opening in the tree lawn or street requires a right-of-way permit. Lakeside and township addresses on county sewers fall under the Trumbull County Sanitary Engineer, which has its own permit and inspection process. Both prohibit tying downspouts, sump pumps, and footer drains into the sanitary lateral.

In most communities the owner's responsibility runs to the main. Confirm which office covers your address and ask the installer to handle the permit and the inspection appointment.

On the day, and how to pick an installer

A point repair is a few hours with drains off. A full liner takes a day: jetting, filming, wet-out, cure, reinstatement of branch lines, and a final video. A bursting crew brings an excavator for the pits, a pulling rig, and a dewatering pump, and returns the next day to backfill and seed.

Each bid should name the method, the footage, the liner thickness or HDPE size, and what happens if the camera finds an old septic tie-in. To compare installers whose training and insurance have been verified, find a verified CIPP contractor and ask for a reference from a Cortland or lakeside job in similar wet ground. A crew that has pumped a pit near Mosquito Lake in April will know what to expect at yours.

Sectional Point Repair in Cortland

Fix the spot, not the line

A sectional point repair treats a short length of pipe, usually two to six feet, instead of the whole lateral. A short fiberglass or felt liner saturated with resin is positioned over the defect on an inflatable packer, pressed against the wall, and cured in place. The rest of the line is untouched. Where the defect cannot be lined, the alternative is a small excavation at that exact spot, made possible because the camera and locator have already marked it to within inches.

When it makes sense

One identifiable defect, or two or three close together, on a line whose remaining footage is sound: a joint crushed when a driveway was poured over it, a single root-intruded joint under a parkway tree, a break where the lateral crosses another utility trench, or the transition where under-slab cast iron meets the clay or ABS running to the street.

When it does not

If the camera shows the same defect at every joint, or channeling along the whole bottom of a cast iron line, fixing one spot moves the next backup a few feet down the pipe. A full liner costs more today and far less over the next few years.

A fair test

Ask to see footage of the pipe on both sides of the proposed repair. If it is clean for the full run, a point repair is honest and economical. If it is not, ask why a full liner was not proposed.

ZIP codes served in Cortland

Sectional Point Repair is available throughout Cortland, including ZIP codes 44410.

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Questions we hear in Cortland