Pipe Bursting 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.

Pipe Bursting in Cortland

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.

ZIP codes served in Cortland

Pipe Bursting is available throughout Cortland, including ZIP codes 44410.

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