TRENCHLESS SEWER LINE REPAIR — NO DIGGING UP THE YARD

Old-school sewer replacement means a backhoe, an open trench from house to street, and a wrecked yard, driveway, or patio. Trenchless fixes the same pipe with two small access pits — one near the house, one at the street — and everything between stays intact. Grass, trees, sprinklers, concrete driveway, the big oak in the front yard — all untouched.

Two methods handle most residential repairs. Pipe bursting pulls a new HDPE pipe through the old one while simultaneously fracturing and pushing the old pipe out into the surrounding soil. The new pipe is a full upgrade — same size or bigger, 50+ year lifespan, jointless. CIPP lining (cured-in-place pipe) inserts a resin-saturated felt liner inside the existing pipe, cures it in place with heat or UV, and creates a seamless new pipe wall inside the old one. Both are permanent fixes.

When trenchless is the right fix

1. Root intrusion on clay lateral lines — common on North Louisiana homes built before 1960
2. Cast iron mains with tuberculation and corrosion — older mains that have lost 30-50% of their internal diameter
3. Collapsed Orangeburg tar-paper pipe — used in some older North Louisiana builds; failure rate is high and trenchless is usually the cleanest replacement
4. Offset joints or partial breaks — lining bridges the damage without excavation
5. Lines under driveways, patios, or mature landscaping — where traditional trenching cost (restoration + repair) exceeds trenchless pricing
6. Repeat snaking or jetting hasn't held — when the pipe itself is the problem, not the clog

When trenchless isn't the right fix

We're honest about this. Trenchless needs two things — access to each end of the affected pipe, and a pipe that's still roughly intact enough to pull through or line inside. If your sewer line is completely collapsed and pancaked, if there's a major belly that needs re-sloping, or if the pipe runs under something we can't access — traditional excavation is the right call. We'll tell you on-site which one fits your situation.

What you save with trenchless

Traditional sewer replacement on a North Louisiana home with a 75-foot run under a concrete driveway and landscaped yard gets expensive fast once you factor in excavation, the actual pipe replacement, driveway saw-cut and pour-back, landscape restoration, sprinkler repair, and yard repair. Trenchless on the same job usually comes in well under that all-in, and you keep the driveway and yard. Math is simple when there's a driveway or mature landscaping involved.

What Mark Johnson & Sons brings to the job

Licensed and insured for trenchless work, our own crews (not subcontracted), and we run the full camera workup before quoting so you know exactly what you're replacing and what you're paying for. Permits, city inspection, and 10-year warranty on pipe bursting work. Every job includes a post-repair camera scope so you see the new pipe from end to end before we take final payment.