Camera first. Quote second. Dig last.

Sewer-line work is the highest-variance job in residential plumbing. We have done $1,400 spot repairs (a single cracked section of clay pipe, dug up and replaced from a small excavation in the front yard) and we have done $14,000 full main replacements (an Orangeburg lateral collapsed from one end to the other under a mature oak in Plaza Midwood, requiring the tree to be sleeved-around and the line run under the existing driveway). Both jobs started with the same call. The only difference was what the camera showed us.

This is why we will not quote sewer-line repair over the phone. Anyone who does is guessing. The honest answer to "how much will it cost" is "we'll know once we see the inside of the pipe." The camera-inspection diagnostic is $279 ($69 of it applies to the repair if you book). Spot repair runs $1,400–$3,600. Trenchless lining runs $4,800–$9,200. Full replacement runs $6,500–$14,000 depending on length, depth, and what's above it (landscaping, hardscape, driveway).

Camera, lining, and trenching — what each one means

Camera inspection sends a flexible LED-lit camera down your line from the cleanout, recording what it sees. The footage tells us where the problem is, what it is, what the pipe is made of, and how much pipe is structurally intact. We hand you the USB. About a quarter of our camera inspections end with "your line is fine, here's what was actually wrong" — the obstruction was a one-time foreign object, the pipe is sound, no further work needed.

Trenchless lining (cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP) inserts an epoxy-saturated felt liner into the existing pipe and inflates it against the wall. The liner cures into a new pipe-within-a-pipe, structurally sound, with a 50-year design life. It works when the existing pipe is intact enough to host a liner — small cracks and root intrusion are fine; a fully-collapsed section is not. Trenchless is dramatically less disruptive than open-trench replacement. It costs about 60% as much for similar lengths. We do not lining work in lines older than 60 years without an enhanced inspection, because the substrate matters.

Full open-trench replacement is the right answer when the existing pipe has structural failures the liner can't bridge — partial collapses, multiple severe offsets, sections of Orangeburg pipe that have lost their cross-section. We pull permits with Mecklenburg County for every replacement. We do not start digging without one.