We renew the sewer line without trenching your yard.
Most Northern Virginia plumbers who say trenchless mean they will sub it out. We line pipe in house, which is why we start with the camera instead of a price: a new jointless pipe is cured inside your old one with ultraviolet light, the lawn and the driveway stay where they are, and you see the footage that made the call.
Lining done in house
Camera before the quote
A sewer line does not have to cost you the yard.
Digging used to be the only answer, so that is still the answer most homeowners get quoted. Cured-in-place lining changed the math on a large share of residential laterals here, and the three things worth knowing about it are all verifiable.
It is a new pipe, cast inside the old one
A glass fiber liner arrives already saturated with resin, so there is no mixing on your lawn and no solvent smell in the house. It is pulled into the sewer, inflated tight against the host pipe, and cured hard with ultraviolet light. What you end up with is a jointless pipe inside your pipe, and joints are where roots get in.
The cure takes minutes, not days
Ultraviolet curing sets the resin in roughly 5 to 15 minutes depending on the run. The equipment handles 2-inch through 12-inch pipe, reaches about 150 feet, and turns 45 and 90-degree bends, which covers the great majority of Northern Virginia residential laterals.
It is a real standard, with a real service life
Cured-in-place lining is covered by ASTM F1216, the standard practice for rehabilitating pipe with a resin-impregnated tube, and the design life is 50 years. That is not a brochure number: an EPA-funded study pulled liner samples out of municipal sewers after 21 to 25 years in service and found them in excellent condition.
Camera first. Always.
The camera goes in first
Nobody quotes a sewer line they have not seen. A self-leveling camera runs the lateral from the cleanout, and a locator marks the fault on the ground in your yard, so you know the depth and the spot before anyone talks about money.
You watch the footage
Roots at a joint, a belly holding water, a crushed section, a separated clay hub. You see which one it is on the screen, at your house, and you keep a copy.
Line it, or dig it
If the host pipe is intact enough to line, we cure a new pipe inside the old one and the yard stays shut. If the line is collapsed, badly bellied or offset past the point a liner can bridge, we say so and we dig that section.
Permit, inspection, restore
The county plumbing permit is pulled, the work is inspected before it gets covered (Virginia USBC 113.3(5) requires that), and the ground goes back the way we found it.
The permit numbers you find online are wrong for Northern Virginia. The national cost guide that our ZIP codes resolve to tells homeowners to budget more than $1,000 for sewer permits. The real published schedules: a Fairfax County sewer plumbing permit is $77.70, Loudoun County is $70, and Alexandria is $125 per connection plus $250 per block of excavation. What actually drives the cost up is the street: most residential streets here are VDOT-maintained, so cutting one adds a state permit on top of the county’s, and Arlington requires a $5,000 street permit bond before a contractor may open pavement. The whole breakdown is in our sewer line cost guide.
When we will still tell you to dig
Lining is not a universal answer and we will not sell it as one. Four situations send a job back to excavation, and the camera finds all four before you have spent anything on the wrong repair.
The pipe is collapsed
A liner needs a host pipe to cure against. If a section has caved in, there is nothing to line and that stretch gets replaced.
There is a belly holding water
A sag in the line is a grade problem, not a pipe problem. Lining a belly gives you a smooth new pipe that still holds standing water. The dirt under it has to be fixed.
The joints have separated too far
Offset joints past what a liner can bridge, or a lateral that has pulled apart at the connection, need the ground opened at that point.
Orangeburg
Tar paper pipe, common in houses built here from the 1940s into the early 1970s. It deforms rather than cracks and it is usually replaced outright. One rule matters more than any other: never let anyone run a snake down an Orangeburg line. The cutter tears out pieces of the pipe wall while it works and brings the collapse on early. Camera first, always.
Trenchless sewer work across Northern Virginia
Based in Chantilly, so most of Northern Virginia is a short run. Homes, townhouses, HOA common lines and small commercial laterals in and around:
Fairfax
McLean
Vienna
Great Falls
Oakton
Herndon
Reston
Ashburn
Sterling
Leesburg
Centreville
Burke
Springfield
Annandale
Falls Church
Arlington
Alexandria
Woodbridge
Manassas
Northern Virginia sewer FAQ
Do you actually do the lining yourselves?
Yes. The lining equipment is ours and the crew running it is ours, which is the reason we can look at camera footage and tell you honestly whether a liner is the right call or a waste of your money. A company that subs the work out has one answer available to it.
Does the liner make the pipe smaller?
Slightly, and it does not matter the way people expect. The liner is thin, the new inside surface is smooth and jointless, and smooth beats wide: a lined 4-inch lateral moves waste better than the rough, root-caught 4-inch clay pipe it replaced.
Will it smell, or do you mix chemicals in my yard?
No. The liner arrives already impregnated with a non-VOC resin, so there is no wet-out on site and no odor. That is a real difference from older steam-cured lining.
How much does trenchless sewer lining cost?
We quote lining off the camera footage, because the price follows the length of the run, the diameter and how many bends are in it. What we will not do is print a lining number we cannot stand behind: the trade benchmark published by In-Line Renewal Solutions, the lining system manufacturer, averages about $3,800 for a four to eight-foot spot repair, and that is a contractor average sale price across the country, not a SwiftPro quote. Our own dug-and-replaced sewer jobs in Northern Virginia have run $7,500 to $8,570.
What does a sewer camera inspection cost?
$89 as an add-on if we are already at your house on another call. A scope visit booked on its own has run $500 to $1,725 across our recent jobs, with the middle around $618, because a standalone visit usually includes clearing the line far enough to get the camera through.
Is my sewer lateral my responsibility or the county’s?
In most of Northern Virginia it is yours, from the building all the way to the main, including the part under the street. Fairfax County and Arlington both put it that way in writing. There are real exceptions: the Town of Herndon draws the private portion from the property line to the house only, and the City of Fairfax reimburses part of a lateral repair. Ask us and we will tell you which rule your address falls under.
How long does the work take?
A camera inspection is an hour or so. A lining job on a residential lateral is usually a single day, with the cure itself measured in minutes. An excavation and replacement depends on depth, what is on top of it, and how fast the permit and inspection move.
Do you have to dig up my whole yard?
That is the point of lining: the line is renewed through existing access, so the lawn, the driveway and the mature trees stay where they are. Even when we do have to dig, it is the failed section, located first with the camera, not a trench down the length of the property.
Should I get the sewer scoped before I buy a house?
Yes, and know that a standard home inspection does not include it. InterNACHI’s standards of practice do not require an inspector to scope the sewer, so on a 1960s or 1970s Northern Virginia house it is a separate call and a cheap one against what a failed lateral costs.
More on sewer lines, in plain English
Get the camera down there before anyone quotes you.
If a plumber has priced a sewer replacement at your house without putting a camera in the line, that is a quote for a repair nobody has diagnosed. Book the inspection, watch the footage, and then decide.
Licensed Class A #2705192276 · Based in Chantilly, serving all of Northern Virginia