Sewer Line

What it is

The sewer line is the main drain that carries everything from inside the house out to either the city sewer main in the street or a septic tank in the yard.

Here’s how it breaks down. There’s the drain line — that’s the pipe underneath your house, inside the foundation walls. Then outside the foundation line, in the yard, that’s what’s considered the sewer line. And then once you get to the edge of the property, the sewer line goes into the city’s domain. Underneath the street there’s the city main, and there’s a sewer tap into it, generally underneath the road. If you’re on septic, the end is different — it goes to the tank in your yard instead.

Older lines can be cast iron, clay tile, PVC, or Orangeburg. Clay tiles in particular are classic root-intrusion territory. Just recently I had to replace a section — I sent a scope down, saw a root growing right through the thing, it was a clay tile. Had to remove the whole tree before I could replace the five feet of pipe. The sewer line replacement itself was pretty cheap. Once the hole was dug and the tree was removed, couple hundred bucks. But you’re starting to see the factors.

Why it matters

Sewer lines have a huge fear tax on them. A markup just because most people are afraid of the job itself. If you really break it down, you’re digging up a sewer line, putting gravel down per whatever the municipality requires, and laying new pipe. You can go rent those machines and dig it yourself. I have done that. The price gets the highest when you hire a designated sewer specialist instead of somebody who does excavation generally.

The street cut question is the big one. Some municipalities do the street cut themselves when you need a new sewer tap — they come cut the road and your plumber does the tap. Some don’t, which means you’re responsible for the road repair too. In the peak of the market I’ve paid 15 grand just for the street cut and repair portion. That’s not the line in the yard, that’s just the road part. Different municipalities have different rules on how much of the road you have to repair. Those are the questions you want to answer before you close, not after.

Information kills the multiplier on the fear tax. Hand a plumber a camera scope video and a marked-up yard drawing, and the bid comes back clean. Give them a vague house with unknown drain history and you’re getting padded for every unknown.

How it shows up

Scope before you buy. A plumber will run a camera from the cleanout to the city tap for around $300-500. That $500 can save you $15K on a bad line, or more if there’s a street cut involved.

The ugliest version I’ve seen: a house where a previous owner’s septic had failed and he’d literally poked a pipe into the ground and walked away. I was digging a French drain years later and I fell into a pit of raw sewage. The saving grace was that an adjacent municipality’s sewer line ran close enough that we could tie into it. About a 300-yard run. Tap, trench, restoration — five-figure fix that would have been a deal-killer at the wrong purchase price. If that adjacent line hadn’t existed, that house would have needed a full septic replacement in ground that was already saturated.

Related

septic, sewer tap, fear tax, inspections, plumbing, due diligence