Drain, Drain Go Away: How to Replace Underground Drainage Pipes

LESLIE: Wally in New Jersey, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today with your drainage pipes?

WALLY: I’ve got a little problem with a drainage tile. I have a 3-foot drainage concrete over tile that was running through a property. And it’s right on the property line and it goes into and marries up to a 3-foot steel tile – 3-foot steel drainage tile. The concrete tile has corroded and broke and is collapsing, which is causing water to come up through the ground. I’m not really sure how to get these two tiles back together, what the solution is for this, whether it needs to be an excavator or – I don’t know.

TOM: So, how deep are we talking about here?

WALLY: The top of the tile is only about 10 inches below the ground. It used to be – what it is – it’s a runoff off the road, which goes through, actually, three properties. And then it goes back into an open (inaudible at 0:30:09). All this tile that was …

TOM: But Wally, if it’s only 10 inches off the surface, then the easiest thing to do is to dig it up from the surface and repair it.

There are ways to repair pipes that are in place underground. There are ways to line pipes. There are systems out where, essentially, a fiberglass sleeve can be put inside of an existing pipe that has failed and cracked. But they’re pretty expensive and you usually reserve those for places where you can’t dig. But if you can access this thing within a foot of the surface or 2 feet at the surface, then it’s definitely worth it.

WALLY: Definitely worth it. Yeah, it’s making a big mess. We had such a hard winter up north up here that I think some just gave and broke and got a big mess, actually.

TOM: Yeah. Well, if it’s that high up in the soil line, it’s above the frost line so, obviously, when it gets wet, it freezes and it cracks. It expands and cracks. So, that’s something that’s going to keep repeating itself because of its position.

WALLY: So, that’s the solution is some kind of fiberglass liner, so break the – break that tile or the concrete pipe back further, then try to slide a bigger tile into it? And then into the steel?

TOM: No, no. No, no, no. No, no. You misunderstand.

WALLY: OK.

TOM: What I’m saying is that you want to dig down and replace the sections of broken pipe.

Now, if you don’t want to do that, you can line the pipe. It’s not a do-it-yourself project. You need to find a company that can do it. And the way that’s done is they push from – they access the pipe at one point and they push what kind of looks like a fiberglass sock into the line. And then they fill the pipe with hot water that cures it and forms sort of a tube or a pipe within a pipe.

But that’s the kind of thing that you do if you’re going under driveways or around pools and stuff where you really don’t want to cause any …

WALLY: Nope. This is just through a yard.

TOM: Yeah, if it’s just through a yard, just dig it up, replace it and call it a day.

WALLY: OK. Thank you very kindly.

LESLIE: Alright. Thanks so much for calling The Money Pit.