Signs Your Pipes Need Relining
A blocked drain, a gurgling pipe or a damp patch in the yard doesn't automatically mean your sewer line needs relining, but each is worth checking before it gets worse.
- A CCTV inspection confirms the cause before any work starts
What the symptoms usually mean
None of the signs below prove on their own that a pipe needs relining. They tell you where to look, and whether it's worth booking a camera through the line.
Recurring blockages. A drain that clears with jetting and blocks again within weeks usually has a physical obstruction inside the pipe: root intrusion, a collapsed section or scale build-up catching debris in the same spot. See blocked drains in Perth for what's usually behind a blockage that keeps returning.
Gurgling or gulping drains. A gurgling sound when another fixture drains means something further down the pipe is partly blocking flow, narrowing the bore enough to trap air behind the water.
Slow-draining fixtures. One slow drain is often local. Several fixtures slow at once points further down the line, toward the section shared by the whole house.
Damp or soft patches in the yard. Ground that stays soft, sinks slightly or turns greener than the grass around it can mean wastewater is escaping through a crack below the surface, along your sewer line's route.
A named Perth cause: a lot of these symptoms trace back to soil movement, not pipe age alone. Perth's sandy soils shift more than clay as ground moisture changes, opening a gap at a joint or straining an older pipe run.
Where these symptoms show up around your home
- Gurgling drain
- Damp patch
- Recurring blockage
- Tree root intrusion
Two causes that show up a lot in Perth
Tree root intrusion
Roots do not force their way through a solid pipe wall. They find a gap that already exists, usually at a joint or a hairline crack, and follow the moisture leaking out of it, then keep growing and slowly fill the bore with fine roots that catch paper and debris. A pipe damaged this way is often a strong candidate forsewer pipe relining: the liner bonds against the inside of the pipe and seals off the joint the roots got in through.
Ground movement in Perth's sandy soils
Much of the Perth metro area sits on free-draining sand rather than clay, and sandy soil moves more than clay as the amount of moisture in the ground changes. That movement can open a small gap at a pipe joint or put uneven pressure along the pipe's length, particularly in older properties still running clay, concrete or asbestos-cement pipe. It is a genuine, local cause of pipe damage, not tied to any particular time of year.
None of the signs above confirm relining is needed by themselves. ACCTV inspection does that: a camera run through the pipe shows exactly where the damage is. From there we can walk you throughhow pipe relining works or point you to ourFAQ page for the questions most people ask before booking.
Not sure what's causing it?
Book a CCTV inspection and we'll show you what's going on before recommending anything.