No-dig pipe relining
across Marrickville

A resin-soaked liner is drawn through the existing drain, inflated so it presses against the pipe wall along its whole length, and then cured until it sets hard. What you end up with is a continuous pipe formed inside the old one, with no joints along the lined section. Since joints are where roots enter and where ground movement opens gaps, removing them is the point of the exercise. The old pipe stays where it is and becomes the mould.

Because of what you dig into. Marrickville sits low, on ground that was swamp until it was drained in the 1890s and built over. The water table is shallow. Go down far enough to reach a sewer and a trench will often start taking water, which means pumping it out to work in it. That is slow, it is messy, and on a narrow lot it is happening within a metre or two of a shared wall. Dewatering next to a neighbour's footings on made ground is a genuine risk, not a theoretical one.

Usually yes, and it is the most common thing we line here. Earthenware was laid in short lengths, so there is a joint every metre or so, and after a hundred-odd years those joints are where everything goes wrong. Lining bridges all of them at once. What rules it out is not the material but the condition: if a section has fully collapsed, or lost so much wall that there is nothing left to press the liner against, that part needs replacing first.

A camera goes down first, always. The footage tells us whether the pipe is intact enough to act as a mould, where the joints are open, whether roots are through and how far, and whether anything has dropped out of alignment. We hand that footage over. Nobody should be quoting a reline off a description of the symptoms, and here nobody should be quoting a dig without knowing what depth the water starts at either.

It affects the alternative more than it affects the reline. Heritage conservation areas are widespread through this suburb, and they constrain what you can change externally. A tiled path, an original front fence, a mature street tree, a period frontage: all things that are straightforward to trench through and expensive or contentious to put back. Relining goes in through existing access points and leaves the surface as it was, which sidesteps that conversation entirely.

Most residential relines are done inside a day. The line is out of service while the liner cures, typically a few hours, and we will tell you the window before we start so you can plan around it. It is not a multi-day job with a trench open across the property, which on a lot where the only access is the front path is the difference between an inconvenience and a fortnight.

Sectional patches over a single bad joint run about $900 to $2,200. A full run from the house to the boundary is usually $3,500 to $7,000 depending on length, diameter and how many bends it has. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 and comes off the reline if you proceed. It reads as more than a dig until you price the dig properly here, with pumping, spoil removal and reinstating a heritage frontage in it.