Pipe Bursting in Laguna Beach

Cottages on the hills, houses in the canyons

Laguna Beach grew as an art colony and summer town from the 1910s through the 1950s, and most of the city was built before the tract era ever reached it. The cottages and bungalows of North Laguna, the downtown village, the streets climbing Temple Hills and Bluebird Canyon, Woods Cove and the older parts of South Laguna sit on vitrified clay laterals laid shallow and jointed every couple of feet, with cast iron under raised floors. Many of those laterals do not run to the street at all; they run downhill across a neighbor's lot to a sewer main in a rear or side easement, which was the only way to serve a hillside lot before pumping was common. The houses added in the 1960s and 1970s in Top of the World, Arch Beach Heights and the canyons used cast iron under slab and early ABS, and the relatively few newer homes and the many remodels have modern pipe tied into old connections.

The failures follow the pipe and the hill. Old clay opens at the joints and takes roots. Cast iron rusts through along the bottom in the salt air. Any lateral crossing a slope can shear at a joint where the ground creeps, and the laterals that cross slide areas have been pulled apart outright. Remodels have left tight bends and odd transitions where new plastic meets old clay.

Steep lots, slide ground, no room

Laguna Beach is canyons and ridges of weak sedimentary rock that step straight down to the water. Bluebird Canyon has had major landslides, the canyon walls and coastal bluffs creep every wet winter, and laterals in those areas show offsets and sheared joints that a flat-land city never sees. The soils are expansive clay over bedrock, swelling in the rain and shrinking all summer. Mature trees, eucalyptus, pine, pepper and the old ficus of the village streets, grow into every open clay joint. And the lots themselves are the problem for any conventional repair: narrow streets, no driveways, houses stacked above one another, retaining walls, stairs instead of yards, and laterals under the neighbor's garden. Open-trench replacement is often physically impossible here, which is why trenchless work has been routine in Laguna longer than anywhere else in the county.

Sewers and permits

The City of Laguna Beach operates the sewer collection system in most of the city, and South Coast Water District serves South Laguna. The lateral from the house to the connection at the main is the property owner's responsibility, including any section that runs through an easement across another lot and the part under the parkway or sidewalk. Lateral repair or replacement needs a plumbing permit, anything in the sidewalk, street or a public easement needs an encroachment permit and an inspection, and work on a mapped slope or bluff can need additional review. The contractor should pull every permit and say so in the quote.

Which trenchless method fits a Laguna Beach lateral

• Sewer pipe lining is the answer for most of the city. It fits old clay that still holds its shape and slope, rusted cast iron under a slab, and above all the easement laterals that cross a neighbor's yard, because a cured-in-place liner is installed from a cleanout on your own lot and seals every joint without excavating anywhere along the run.
• Pipe bursting fits a collapsed section or a line that needs to be upsized when there is room for two small pits, one at each end.
• Sectional point repair handles one sheared joint on a slope, one crushed section under a retaining wall or stair, or one bad remodel transition on an otherwise sound line.

Crews that handle trenchless sewer repair in Laguna Beach work these hillside lots every week, and a good one will tell you from the footage which method fits, and how the equipment gets to the house, before quoting.

What the job looks like

A camera inspection maps the line and marks every defect on the ground with its depth, which on a Laguna lot often means marking it across a neighbor's yard. Hydro jetting clears roots, scale and silt so the pipe wall can be seen and so the resin bonds to clean pipe. The liner is installed from the cleanout at the house and cured in place; where there is no cleanout, one is added first. Most residential jobs finish in a day, with water off for a few hours during the cure, and you should receive the before-and-after footage. Every trenchless job starts with a camera, and what a sewer camera inspection shows explains what the inspection finds and why it comes first.

To compare installers who have been checked for licensing and CIPP training, you can find a verified CIPP contractor through an independent directory.

Pipe Bursting in Laguna Beach

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 Laguna Beach

Pipe Bursting is available throughout Laguna Beach, including ZIP codes 92651, 92652.

More trenchless services in Laguna Beach

Questions we hear in Laguna Beach