Hold on to your hats. There's a new tech in town and it's proving to be the best Trenchless Sewer Rehabilitation method yet. Let's check it out.
As has been discussed in my last several posts there are a lot of different methods to rehabilitate a sewer line. Pipe Lining, Pull-in-Place, Pipe Bursting & Epoxy Coating all have their place in the rehab pecking order. However, there is a new method that really does change the game. Read on to see why...
What is UV Lightray Casting?
Ladies, you know when you go down to your favorite nail salon to get a mani-pedi and sit down after they apply the acrylic and put your fingers in under the UV light. It's just like that. The material that we have uses UV light to harden the pipe. This ensures that the material is ultra strong and cures extremely fast! The material that is used for this system is different from the liner we use on what we will call "typical" liner. The liner we use in the other method is more of a felt like material while this is a fiber-glass imbedded product. Kind of like the way they use fiberglass to repair cars. This fiberglass reenforces the structure of the liner giving it a tensile strength of ***** more then PVC. PVC can withstand a pressure of ****PSI while this liner holds up to **** PSI.
Why a Game Changer?
So you cure the liner with Ultra Violet Light. Who cares?! You might be saying who cares how you cure the liner as long as its cured. Well, it's all about time. The "original" way to cure the liner is what's called ambient cure. It takes about 4 hours for the liner to harden. That's not too bad, but if you have any laterals (where the toilet, sink or other fixture ties into your mainline) then you have to wait an additional 24 hours for the line to get hard enough to use a robotic drill to reinstate (cut out the hole so those fixtures can once again dump into your mainline).
There is steam cured liner. This uses steam to heat the liner to cure the epoxy being used. This can be reinstated immediately after installation. A couple potential problems? The first one isn't too bad. It takes about 3 min per foot for the liner to cure. Not too bad on a short shot but if your doing 90 feet that can be upwards of 4 1/2 hours. The techs have to be on site to monitor the equipment the whole time so it can cost a little bit more. But the time isn't that bad but there is another potential problem on bigger jobs. When installing you need to use a diesel powered machine that super heats the water to steam before introducing it into the line. You can't use this indoors and if it's at your house we can run the hoses in, but on a large commercial job the hoses wont reach and you can't extend them because the steam will cool too much traveling that distance. This may limit this curing method to be used.
OK, so now we get to UV Light casting. We said before it was fast. How fast? How does 10 min sound? 10 min and we are ready to reinstate any laterals covered. If there are no reinstatements we can go from shoot to ship off in about an hour (not including set up time). So, you truly have minimal down time. The beauty about this product is that we can use it to shore up a broken spot in your sewer line by using up to a 10 ft patch or we can rehabilitate your entire sewer line with up to 150ft run at a time everything in between. This stuff is also ultra strong. It has a tensile strength higher then PVC and can withstand higher heat as well.
How it works
As with all the trenchless rehabilitation methods we've discussed (other then pipe bursting) a descale and debris removal will be necessary for proper adherence of the liner. How can we do in minutes what used to take hours? It's all about the UV baby!! Think of a manicure. The gel they put on nails would take a long time to dry on its own, so what do they do? Put it under Ultra Violet Light. Now this can't be done with just any resin. The 2 part resin that is used in the ambient cure (mentioned earlier) is great but it doesn't react to the UV light. A special mixture of specific resins is required to allow the reaction that will harden under the light.
Well friends, That's going to be about it for our UV Lightray. It's a great product with a myriad different uses. Ask your installer if this is an option because this is the way to go. Look for our next post that will hopefully help you decide on some of your plumbing needs.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Plumber,
Bryan Lopez
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