How Does Pipe Relining Work?

If there’s a broken or cracked pipe in your Sydney home, or even a blocked drain, you might be surprised when your plumber offers a service called pipe relining. They sell it to you as the cheaper, and neater, option to fixing damaged pipes and it sounds a little too good to be true. But it really isn’t it. So how does pipe relining actually work?

(image source: Shutterstock)

You’re probably aware that many surgeries these days can be assessed, or indeed performed, with the use of a small camera that is slipped into your body. Pipe relining actually shares the same basic principles as key-hole surgeries and the like. To find out exactly what the damage is and what needs to be done, your plumber will feed a small CCTV camera into your pipe. This simple little process can shave hours, as well as hundreds of dollars, off your plumbing job, as all the plumber needs is an access point to insert the camera, rather than to be able to access the entire pipe section themselves.

Once the camera’s been inside your pipe and the situation has been judged, it’s time to clean that pipe so it’s ready to be relined. This’ll be done with high pressure water jets, so there’s nothing standing in the way of a successful pipe relining job. Now to the tricky bit.

A seamless and flexible liner will be cut to size and covered in an environmentally-friendly resin. This liner goes inside the pipe, and will either be affixed to the pipe with compressed air, or by inserting an inflatable bladder that makes the liner take on the shape of the pipe itself. The resin then begins to set and voilà! You now have a fully working and secure pipe inside your old, cracked one.

Pipe relining is a very clever, yet simple technology that can leave you with replacement pipes that can last up to 50 years, not to mention relined pipes are actually better protected against roots from nearby trees than an ordinary pipe. Plus, the technology can be used for simple patch jobs, as well as big ones that cover whole sections of pipes.