Pipe Bursting in Stanton

Small lots, one building era

Stanton was a farm town along the Pacific Electric line and Beach Boulevard that incorporated in 1956 as the tracts arrived, and nearly everything in it was built between 1950 and 1970. The oldest blocks, around the old town center near Beach and Katella and along Cerritos Avenue, have houses from the 1920s through the 1940s on shallow vitrified clay laterals, with cast iron under raised floors. The tracts that fill the rest of the city, along Western, Dale, Chapman and Orangewood, are slab-on-grade with cast iron under the house and clay or early ABS to the street. Stanton also has more small-lot, duplex, apartment and mobile-home-park property than almost any city in the county, much of it from the 1960s and 1970s on the same cast iron and clay, with laterals running under shared driveways, carports and neighboring units.

The failures follow the pipe. Cast iron under a slab channels out along the bottom over sixty years, so the camera sees a clean crown and misses a pipe that is nearly gone underneath. Clay joints open and admit roots. ABS cracks at fittings and bellies where the soil settled, and on the dense lots a lateral is often crushed under a driveway or a slab that was poured after the pipe went in.

Clay soil and old trees

Stanton is flat alluvial clay that swells in the winter rains and shrinks all summer, and six decades of that cycle has opened joints and offset pipe under most streets. The water table is moderate here, deeper than on the coastal side of the county but close enough to the pipe in a wet year to find an open joint. The parkway trees planted with the tracts, mostly ficus, carob and liquidambar, are now large, and root intrusion at clay joints is the most common finding on a Stanton sewer camera inspection, with channeled cast iron close behind.

Sewers and permits

The city's public works department operates the local sewer collection system, and the lateral from the house to the connection at the main is the property owner's responsibility, including the part under the parkway and sidewalk. On a multi-unit property the owner is responsible for the shared lateral as well. Lateral repair or replacement needs a plumbing permit from the City of Stanton, and anything in the sidewalk, parkway or street needs an encroachment permit and an inspection before the pit is closed. The contractor should pull both and say so in the quote.

Which trenchless method fits a Stanton lateral

• Sewer pipe lining fits nearly all of the city: channeled cast iron under a slab, and clay with root-intruded joints and small offsets that still holds shape and slope. A cured-in-place liner from the cleanout seals every joint and crack in one pass, and on a dense lot it is the only method that needs no digging at all.
• Pipe bursting fits a collapsed section, a crushed run under a driveway, or a shared lateral that needs to be upsized for several units. Two small pits and a new fused polyethylene pipe on the old alignment.
• Sectional point repair handles one crushed joint under a driveway or carport, or one root ball on an otherwise sound line.

Crews that handle Orange County's trenchless sewer repair contractor, serving Stanton work tight multi-unit lots every week, and a good one will tell you from the footage which method fits, and where the equipment will set up, 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 shared lateral also tells you which unit the problem sits under. Hydro jetting clears roots, scale and grease so the pipe wall can be seen and, if the line is being lined, so the resin bonds to clean pipe. Lining runs from the cleanout at the house; bursting needs a small pit at each end of the run. Most residential jobs finish in a day, with water off for a few hours during a liner cure, and you should receive the before-and-after footage. The lining process, from liner preparation to the finished cure, is explained in epoxy liner installation in detail.

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 Stanton

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 Stanton

Pipe Bursting is available throughout Stanton, including ZIP codes 90680.

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Questions we hear in Stanton