Well, hello, this is AJ with Comfy Cozy Heating, Cooling and Plumbing.
And this is Robert.
And what we’re doing is sitting around talking about the new requirements coming down from the Allegheny County Health Department. And that’s through the Plumbing Advisory Board, right?
That is correct.
And what are some of those things that you’ve heard so far, Robert?
So they are starting a new division where they are requiring the inspection of sewers and pipes previous and after a lining, which is more of like a temporary repair.
So basically, what are those liners that we’re talking about? They’re basically They’re just putting a sock inside the pipe and then it cures in place.
It is more or less like an internal sleeve to try to get a little bit more life out of some of these aging pipes. But not every pipe is suitable for this application.
So what are some of the reasons it would not be suitable?
So instances where we have broken pipes or misaligned joints that can cause an interruption of flow or slowing down that flow, as well as improperly pitched or sloped pipes. No matter what you do to the pipe outside of replacing it, gravity still only works in one direction.
Yeah, that’s true. I just recently heard of one where another company is, they installed a liner They didn’t clean the pipe properly. And since they didn’t clean the pipe properly, the liner didn’t adhere. But what they forgot to check in the first place was the pipe was falling in the wrong direction. At one point, it was even level.
One of the hardest challenges in dealing with sewage is no matter how much you want to, gravity is always going to win to a degree. So yeah, if your pipe is, if the outer pipe, the existing pipe, is going the wrong direction, then that sewage doesn’t know which way it’s supposed to go. It goes whichever way it wants to go.
And with the NASSCO Sewer Pipe Inspection or NASSCO Pipe Inspection, what are some of the criteria that they look for in the, or I can go over this list and go over the Pipeline Assessment Certification or the NASSCO Pipeline Assessment Certification?
Yeah, why don’t you tell me some of those things that they’re looking for there?
So if we’re doing a full certification, it is looking for the weather, whether or not the pipe has been pre -cleaned, whether there’s a flow control, the purpose of the pipe, the direction, whether we’re going upstream or downstream, the inspection technology that’s used, including CCTV, laser, sonar, sidewall scanning, the inspection status, the location code, whether or not it’s in a driveway, sidewalk, street, along with the pipe use. whether or not it’s a combined pipe. What’s a combined pipe for some of the people that don’t know, Robert?
So, referencing like a combination?
Correct.
So, a combination pipe would be where you have sewage and stormwater collected into one pipe. Back in the old days, that was a common thing to deal with rainwater that way. But with communities growing, and reaching out farther into the suburbs and the workload that is being placed on these sewers, they’re finding that a lot of these storms are creating too much of a demand on these systems, and so they are having to find ways to separate that in a lot of communities.
So now we started down that section. I’ll go back to the other criteria as far as the shape, material, lining method, coating method, and they get into whether or not they have deposits, roots, infiltration, obstacles, vermin, rats, roaches, and other vermins. Is it common to see vermin in the sewers?
It’s not impossible. Unfortunately, in an older city, a larger city, you’re going to have a lot of what the barman might consider to be food inside those pipes. So if there’s a place to get food in an otherwise lack of food rich environment, they’re going to find whatever they can find.
And then it also goes down into the access point, the type of tap that it has, and what they mean by the tap is the connection to the sewer itself. But I want to go back to the culmination sewers. And with the culmination source, yes, that was something of an older time period. And what a lot of people don’t realize is the reason, there’s multiple reasons, but one of the main reasons that they’re doing the pipeline assessment with the older infrastructure is when a lot of people don’t realize whenever the a storm, the sewage system gets overloaded. When it gets overloaded, floodgates open and dump that stormwater and raw sewage directly into the rivers.
Right, and it’s a situation of trying to protect that raw sewage from backing up into people’s houses whenever those pipes get overloaded.
Right, but where do we make our water from? Yeah, we make our water right from those streams and stuff, so. Right from the river.
Yep. So, if we’re just recycling that sewage right in, that leads to excess wear on those treatment systems, plus a lot more cost just involved with having to further treat the water beyond just being runoff.
Now, it’s, hey, mixed with sewage, it requires a lot more of your chlorine and other chemicals and whatnot that they need to help make that better. So, With the NASSCO sewer pipe inspection or the NASSCO, yeah, NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PA or the NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PA, what we’re doing with those is using, to basically put it more into layman’s terms, we’re using a comprehensive video inspection. And the NASSCO is a nationally approved grading system. That grading system looks for problems like I mentioned a little bit earlier, root intrusion, cracks in the pipe, crack or broken joints, joint misalignments, chemical buildup inside the pipe, along with other deviations like when the pipe has sagged or the pipe base has sagged, now causes the pipe to have a low spot or a belly, which would cause solid material to clog in the future. These are just to name a few of the items listed for the NASSCO pipe inspection.
is this something that the homeowners have to be concerned with? So the idea of roots is one that we see all the time. I’ve heard many customers say, oh, well, it’s just roots. I just need to get them cleaned out. Well, the problem is, is if there’s a root entering your sewer, that means there’s a space for it to get through, which means you could have sewage leaking out at that point into the yard or wherever it might be. But with that, as that root lives there and grows and gets thicker, it can push that joint farther and farther apart, and someone might have roots in their system and they have no clue about it.
until it builds up so much that it creates a blockage or a backup, and then it can be identified. There are companies out there that just run a basic snake through there to knock down the roots just to get it flowing, but the problem still exists. All they’re doing is treating the symptom. So, in the world of pipelining, that root coming in is, you still have a broken pipe there. Just because you get rid of the roots doesn’t mean you fix the broken pipe.
By sealing it they try to attempt to seal it up But that roots still there and if it’s still growing it can cause issues with that liner down the road So with a liner is is basically just a patch.
Are there other ways to solve this problem? Yeah, there’s there’s many different ways some a little bit more Intricate some a little bit more basic, but yeah, it kind of all depends on the situation to what options are available Pipe bursting is one that I’ve seen work very well in Instances where hey, maybe maybe we don’t want to disturb all these people in the front or have to redo the whole driveway. And with that pipe bursting, hey, you’re not just putting a Band -Aid on the inside of an old pipe. No, you’re replacing that pipe with a new pipe. You can make a lot of corrections that way.
As well as, hey, if it’s a situation where we’re not as concerned with the landscaping. Then the best option in that is normally to go ahead and replace that pipe with nice new pipe.
That’ll be good for another 50, 70 plus years. So if we do a pipe bursting or we basically open trench and then redo the landscape afterwards, You really don’t have any worries afterwards because what else happens whenever that’s done?
What does Allegheny County require? So on all of it, whether it’s the open trench replacement or the pipe bursting or even the lining, they still require inspections on all of it. We’ve seen instances where people go through and just do a patch repair of replacing the, or I’m sorry, of lining. And then if it fails, well, okay, now you’re in the same spot for more costs of having to dig all that up anyway, or change methods to reburst or whatever.
And it’s adding costs and adding headache to the consumer. And if we are doing an open cut or if we are open trenching it, we have to actually bed the pipe in stone and make sure that everything is set to the proper grade.
and there isn’t going to be any problems in the future with that pipe. Exactly. It’s something to where, once again, physics is going to be physics. We can’t change that. Now there are some very few exceptions where you have to mechanically defy physics.
But in an ideal world, you don’t want to rely on a mechanical system if you don’t have to, for something as sensitive as sewage inside a home. That totally makes sense.
So the NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PA, NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs. Actually, if you don’t mind, I’m going to interrupt there. In case we haven’t mentioned it, the NASSCO is the National Association of Sewer Service Companies.
So they directly deal with sewer inspections and, uh, NASSCO, I’m sorry, NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs and NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs.
So that’s basically all they really do. That’s what they specialize in.
And once again, it all, them, uh, in conjunction with local municipalities and the health departments are all there to help protect public safety.
That’s…
A lot of people don’t realize how important plumbing is to public safety. Exactly. You can look up, even online, some of the early references to public safety dealing with plumbing, whether that be the yellow fever or the bubonic plague, anything around there.
Plumbing definitely helped with ridding those issues from society. And something I found just off of the NASSCO’s site for NASSCO piping. NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs, and NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs. Their assessment is the first step in protecting the underground asset to alleviate their conditions. NASSCO members offer high -tech cameras and other equipment, services, software, and methods to access buried infrastructure and identify any area of potential failure before they become a problem. NASSCO Pipeline Assessment Certification Program allows field workers to use a common language to classify conditions and record their level of severity.
These results are then used to determine the best course of action to maintain or rehabilitate a compromised pipe or section of pipe. Comfy Cozy here has been NASSCO certified for years.
and NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PA and NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs. So looking at the NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs and NASSCO sewer inspection Allegheny County PAs, we mentioned a handful of the objects that they’re looking for here. One that I wanted to touch on that we see fairly often in this area is the tap itself. So you have something called a break -in tap or a hammer tap. where back in the old days they would more or less just take a hammer and break the top of the pipe to just set the house sewer right inside. Unfortunately with that there’s no perfect seal.
In some instances they would pour some concrete around there to try to seal that up, but with all this infrastructure aging, if you have 70 -year -old concrete that’s constantly subjected to water, it’s gonna fail. It’s not gonna be a perfect seal.
You’re gonna get water leaching out as well as sewage leaching out, which means you’re gonna open up a pathway for roots to come in and cause more problems. But I thought concrete was perfect.
It seals against everything. until you put it in the ground for 70 years and in contact with water, and unfortunately, we have situations to where, you know, if someone’s using Drano or some other sort of branded chemical cleaner, what can happen is, yeah, the play pipe or the terracotta pipe might not be as affected, but any of those joints, that acid through time is going to take its toll on all of those joints. And once again, then you have those acids going into the ground, which could get back into the drinking water supply. And all around, it’s a problem.
There are better ways to treat a slow drain than using some sort of chemical agent.
Now, what are some of the other methods that we have to clear out a clogged drain?
So one of the more…
At Comfy Cozy. One of the more common things that we see that most plumbers use and we have access to this as well is just simple snaking. So there’s multiple different styles of machine, whether they’re the smaller homeowner grade or the larger grade.