It dates back to Proposition 1 on the St. Louis County Election Ballot. Voting day was April 6, 1999 and that was when electors of unincorporated St. Louis County voted yes to the Proposition. Proposition 1 was formally known at the time as the Residential Sewer Lateral Repair Program.
The idea was to charge homeowners $28.00 per year and they would have a defective residential sewer lateral repaired from the fund created by the Proposition to hold all the fees collected from real estate property tax bills beginning in 1999.
Prior to the vote residents were faced with covering the cost of a sewer lateral repair themselves which ranged in price from $2,000 to $15,000. The County even stated at the time that sewer laterals that ran under a street before joining the municipal main sewer line could cost in excess of $15,000.
The Residential Sewer Lateral Repair Program removed the cost of sewer main replacement from homeowners although they still had to take care of the costs associated with clog removal if the lateral did not require replacement.
Fast forward to today.
Sewer laterals in St. Louis are still being replaced when defective but the costs have gone down considerably from the rates quoted in 1999. That’s because trenchless technologies are now being used.
The biggest part of the cost of sewer lateral replacement was connected to the digging of a trench to get to the defective pipe to remove and replace it. The plumbers at NuFlow don’t dig up your yard or property.
All they do is dig no more than two holes, roughly 4-feet square, at each connection position of the lateral. Once a tiny camera is inserted inside the pipe, they can view the condition of the lateral without having to pull the entire pipe out of the ground.
After a break, leak or other damage is located, a liner or pipe bursting replacement is chosen and installed. Neither of these choices requires the digging up of your existing pipe nor does it mean you will go without water or sewer service for any length of time.
The professionals at NuFlow will work with you and the City of St. Louis to ensure that your repair qualifies for coverage under the Residential Sewer Lateral Repair Program. They will even take care of all the paperwork related to the program so you don’t have to figure it out yourself.
Not only will you save money on your qualifying replacement, even if the replacement program did not exist you would still save money. That’s because trenchless lateral repairs are an environmentally friendly approach to a job that used to leave behind scars in yards, landscaping and sidewalks.
Not only is trenchless repairs less costly, it is less time consuming with many of these repairs completed in just a few hours. To find out more about sewer repair and regulations in the St. Louis area, contact NuFlow today. Call 314-856-3262 to book an appointment for a lateral pipe inspection using trenchless technology.