The topic of replacing your entire sewer line or repairing a section is a widely discussed topic for many years. There are pros and cons to each option however, when selecting to repair the sewer line when you needed a full line replacement, it becomes stressful and costly!
We encourage all of our customers to take time, research, weigh the pros and cons for both options. In most cases a property owner would opt into a partial sewer line replacement to save money, this is understandable when dealing with a very expensive repair that is most likely not covered by insurance.
The risk when repairing the sewer pipe is if there are additional sections of broken pipe that your plumber was not aware of from his camera inspection, or snaking of the sewer line. It is extremely common for the plumber to snake a sewer line, locate a break and notify the property owner that the broken section of pipe needs to be repaired.
The additional factors that are not considered include the chance of another section of pipe being broken beyond the initial break. The plumber has not done anything wrong by providing info about the first break because this is as much information as he can obtain. At this stage he would not have any idea that the sewer is broken beyond this point because his snake or camera cannot pass this broken section.
The issue for the property owner is that they are now going to repair one section of pipe to only find out a few weeks, or months later, that additional sections of the pipe requires a repair. Repairing multiple sections of pipe on different dates is considerably more costly than if the property owner would have replaced the entire sewer line at one time. Replacing the entire sewer line at once would avoid the possibility of future back ups as well as thousands of dollars in additional cost.
It is also important to understand that insurance companies do not cover sewer line replacements in most cases, and if you are lucky enough to get any form of coverage, they will only cover repairs on a small section of the sewer line. The problem with this is if there are additional issues with the sewer and additional work is required. It is often that these things come up, the insurance company does not want to cover additional claims and now the property owner is responsible for the cost.
If you have any questions specific to your sewer repair or replacement it is important not to rush the process and speak with a licensed master plumber on all questions you may have.
