Author: Travis Taylor

At an aging apartment building in North York, Ontario Pipe Lining cleaned, repaired, and lined 10 thinning and clogged copper kitchen stacks to avoid a full building re-pipe.

Project: The third-party property manager had been dealing with costly kitchen stack back-ups and drain clogs on an ongoing basis, resulting in regular inconveniences for apartment residents. The job needed to be completed before Christmas, so the timing was tight. After reaching out to Ontario Pipe Lining, our technicians started with a video assessment of the building to pinpoint the source of the issue and devise a repair plan.

Site: 1441 Lawrence Avenue East, North York, Ontario.

System: 15-20-year-old copper stacks (10 stacks, 1200 linear feet of 2”, 3” and 4”) in an 18-story apartment building.

Problem: Our condition assessment revealed that the bottom of each stack was plugged as it connected to the horizontal main. The horizontal main was blocked at 38 feet with grease buildup, impacting the entire system of connecting stacks and creating frequent back-ups in the 250 unit apartment tower. Plumbers cut and provided a sample of the thinning copper stack during a section repair.  The copper stacks had broken down and thinned to the thickness comparable to an aluminum pop can, and could easily be bent or crushed.

Copper stacks have a tendency to thin as time progresses due to erosion from high flow rates and corrosive forces from the chemicals and debris being put down the drain. Even the chemicals used to treat drinking water interact with the ferrous metal and eventually corrode its integrity.

Because the building’s pipes were so thin and fragile, stalling the repair process could have eliminated drain re-lining as a viable option. Once pipes become too thin, our epoxy liner is left with nothing to bond to. 

Solution: OPL prepared a sample to show the effectiveness of the liner in re-newing the copper drain stack. The building owner appreciated that the kitchen cabinets and finishes didn’t need to be removed or restored during the drain re-lining process, saving a considerable amount of time and money.

The thinning copper pipes were re-lined with an epoxy solution, which restored pipes to the thickness of the original copper stack. Our epoxy lining is inert to erosion and corrosion, resulting in a longer-lasting, back-up resistant stack. As grease is unlikely to adhere to the plastic lining, this permanent epoxy solution would also prevent the corrosive flows from continuing to break down and degrade the sanitary stacks.

The drain relining process allowed the system to be fully restored to operational standards without removing and re-installing the building residents’ kitchens, walls or surrounding finishes. The entire 10-kitchen stack system or 1200 linear feet of 2, 3 and 4” copper stacks were cleaned, repaired, and lined on schedule with minimal disruption to the tenants. 

Prior to repair, 1441 Lawrence was among many apartment buildings and condos in Toronto that didn’t maintain its stacks with an annual or bi-annual flushing program. Regular pipe maintenance is important, but once the stacks have been neglected for 5+ years, it may be time to allocate your maintenance budget to a re-lining project instead. Once the pipes have been re-lined, regular maintenance can occur every 8-10 years without risk of failure.

If you are an apartment or condo building manager dealing with regular pipe back-ups and clogs, contact us for more information on how you can start a re-lining or regular maintenance plan.

For the E.C. Drury School in Milton, Ontario, Ontario Pipe Lining mechanically cleaned, lined, and restored a 150 ft-long corroded pipe system using Nu Flow technology. 

Project: E.C. Drury’s pipes were heavily backed up with calcite, causing water to flood onto the building’s new roof. The school’s roofing engineer believed Nu Flow’s Nu Drain product could help prevent further damage after the new roof was installed. Ontario Pipe Lining was brought on the project to mechanically remove the calcite build-up and restore the piping system before over 200 students returned from summer vacation.

Site: The E.C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton, Ontario, built in 1980. 

System: 150 ft of 6 and 8-inch in diameter storm drain.

Problem: E.C. Drury had recently completed a $5 million dollar roof installation, however, a section of the new roof was flooded with water during a rainstorm. As this problem continued, the roofing contractor, the engineer, and the school tried to determine a solution. The engineer thought the problem could be related to the storm drain and contacted Ontario Pipe Lining for a condition assessment. 

Ontario Pipe Lining was awarded a small contract to line 75 ft of 6” underground storm drain. When Ontario Pipe Lining began assessing the downstream access, the condition of the pipe was reviewed and the problem was bigger than expected. The condition assessment confirmed the location and revealed that the main drain changed sized to 8”. An access pit was created outside on the grass and once the pipe had been opened OPL could fully inspect its condition.

The problem was much larger than simply relining a section of the deteriorated cast iron pipe inside the building. When the pipe expanded from 6” to 8”, the calcite (caused by the hard water) has restricted the flow of the pipe to 1” from the top of the pipe. Without a video inspection, it would’ve been challenging to assess the condition of the pipes and the degree to which they needed to be cleaned to ensure working order.

Solution: The video inspection revealed that the school’s hard water had created a heavy build-up of calcite within the pipe, restricting the flow from 6” and 8” to less than an inch over the 150 ft of the line. In order for the Nu Flow lining to attach itself onto the inside wall of the pipe, the calcite build-up needed to be thoroughly cleaned. Mechanical cleaning would also allow the pipe to open back up to its original diameter. As a result, the amount of lining required to renew the pipe doubled to 150 ft of 6” and 8” drain re-lining.

The pipe was mechanically cleaned by inserting a ½” cable with a variety of cutting heads designed to pulverize and re-open the pipe’s original diameter.

After the pipe had been cleaned, it was lined using one of Ontario Pipe Lining’s key manufacturer’s CIPP technology. With over 12 years of experience lining small diameter pipes, Ontario Pipe Lining can be trusted to install code-compliant CIPP drain re-lining technology. 

This CIPP technique allowed the pipe to be fully restored and lined, while avoiding large scale trenching and destruction of the surrounding area. Once the line had been strung, the pipe was repaired by pulling in the liner, verifying it was in place with a drain camera, and finally inflating a bladder up against the inside wall until the liner had cured. Once the pipe had cured, the bladder was removed, and final CCTV inspections were made to ensure the pipe was ready for immediate use.

Ontario Pipe Lining worked to get the job site cleaned before E.C. Drury’s students returned from summer vacation. Using the CIPP method, the newly-lined pipe is now stronger and more resilient to the water’s high calcite content, extending its lifetime to another 30 to 50 years. Routine video inspections will ensure the pipe is being properly cleaned and maintained over the years.

“The support, planning in advance and execution in the field and the follow up was unparalleled.” – Chris Edge – Senior PM StratEdge Management

Situation

• A very challenging project that involved inaccessible pipes, working at heights and engineering challenges.
• 50-year-old storm drains continually leaked onto the grandstand seating.
• Traditional repair methods were not affordable.

Benefits of Nu Flow Solution

• Nu Flow’s Nu Drain product was used to line 9 roof drain sections 130LF long.
• The pipe sizes ranged from 4” to 8” in diameter.
• In all just under 1400 linear feet was lined using only 18 points of access including the roof.

Situation:

• An automotive manufacturer in Alliston was challenged with aging sanitary drains that often leaked.
• The gang-trapped floor drains body were separating from the slab and continually leaking
• Each leak would effect the production line below and the shut down would cost thousands of dollars per occurrence.
• We stopped the leaks between slab and drain savings thousands of dollars

Benefits of NuDrain Technology:

• OPL lined 20 four foot sections over three days and sealed the drain and the slab eliminating the leak
• The customer is happy with the result that they continue to use OPL to line multiple drain during routine plant shutdowns.

Situation: 

• A vertical storm drain began to leak and many offices had to be relocated as the water damage was repaired.
• 20 linear feet lined in 3 nights using only three access holes

Benefits of Nu Flow Solution:

• Ontario Pipe Lining was engaged by a mechanical contractor who held the maintenance contract with the city of Toronto.
• OPL cleaned and lined 120 linear feet of 4” vertical cast iron storm drain.
• The only access that was needed was on the 13th floor, the 7th and 3rd floor so the debris could be removed.
• The work was completed after hours in 3 days

Using Nu Flow technology, Ontario Pipe Lining repaired the severely corroded drain lines located within Coca-Cola’s bottling facilities.

Project: Use the patented Nu Drain system to line these eroded underground pipes in-place without disrupting business operations.

Customer and Site: A bottling facility for Coca-Cola, one of the world’s largest beverage and bottling companies.

System: Almost 200 feet of underground cast iron pipes to a sanitary waste system. These 4″-wide lines are located beneath 14″ of concrete, rebar and 6″ of soil. The beverage production line is directly above where these pipes lay.

Problem: The sanitary pipes experienced constant backups, prompting the facility manager to investigate the cause. A drain line camera inspection revealed that the bottoms of the pipes were completely missing due to severe corrosion. These failing underground pipes are located beneath millions of dollars’ worth of machinery for the beverage production line, which could not be moved or damaged.

Circumvention: If this facility did not choose Nu Flow’s in-place pipe lining solution, then the only feasible option left would be a reroute of the pipe system. This reroute would have taken several weeks to complete, the process to dig and lay down new pipes would have caused destruction, and the sanitary pipe system would not have been functional during the work.

Solution: Coca-Cola’s facility manager bypassed an inconvenient reroute and chose Ontario Pipe Lining for the rehabilitation project. When other pipe lining competitors and other contractors said that the pipes could not be lined, our technicians successfully did “the impossible.”

The biggest challenge of the job was dealing with the frail and damaged pipes. Our technicians carefully cleaned them and inserted Nu Flow’s Pull-in-Place liner, which cured to form a strong, seamless pipe-within-a-pipe that covers all holes and will protect against future failures. The customer was so pleased with our innovative pipe rehabilitation solution that we have been invited back to complete another pipe lining project at the same location.