THE EXPERT – Jonesboro Right Now – What do you do when you have an underground plumbing leak? Easy: Locate the broken section, get out your shovel, start digging your way down to the problem spot, and make your repair.

Now, what if the “problem spot” is this 30’ of cast iron under a concrete slab and runs from your kitchen sink, across your living room, and eventually ties into the plumbing in your bathroom?

Cabinets will need to be torn out, floors will need to be removed, concrete will have to be jackhammered out, dirt will have to be excavated, then the drain can be replaced. To put things back, you will need a carpenter, drywaller, cabinet installer, flooring installer, and a painter.

Obviously, it is an incredibly invasive process that takes months from start to finish. Customers will need to move out of their home during the process, and the amount of dust left to clean up afterward is staggering.

There is a better way: Pipe Relining. Relining is the process of taking old, rusted-through cast iron and replacing it with a reinforced, epoxy-coated liner. This method is much less invasive than traditional drain replacement and takes a fraction of the time.

A kitchen drain can usually be relined in a matter of a couple of days with few, if any, access points to the plumbing. While this is going on, there is no need to move out.

There are two different ways to line pipes: the first is by saturating a felt liner with epoxy and pulling it in the line, and the second is by spray coating the walls of the drain with epoxy.

At Chris West Plumbing, we prefer felt-reinforced liners because they are the strongest form of epoxy lining and are considered structural rather than simply a coating. The epoxy saturates the felt, so that it reinforces the epoxy much like rebar strengthens concrete.

Even if portions of the cast iron have completely rusted away, the liner bridges the gap and functions as the new pipe. By comparison, spray-applied epoxy is only as strong as the cast iron beneath it.

While spray coatings can slow deterioration, the difference is like comparing a bandage to a stent. We install only NuFlow pipe liners because we believe they are the best in the lining business.

The process begins by identifying the best access points before thoroughly cleaning the cast-iron pipe to remove years of scale and buildup. A custom-measured felt liner is then saturated with epoxy and pulled into the pipe.

Next, a silicone bladder is inflated inside the liner, pressing it tightly against the existing pipe. The liner is then cured either naturally or with UV light, which can reduce curing time to as little as 10 minutes. Once cured, the plumbing system is reconnected, tested, and the work area is cleaned up.

All this happens without breaking floors and destroying a home.

The time to reline your drains is before you start having major problems. If you have cast iron drains under a concrete slab, they will need to be dealt with in the future.

It is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’, and when the time comes, trust the experts at Chris West Plumbing to do the job right the first time.

For more information on pipe lining, or to book a consultation, call Chris West Plumbing at (870) 931-9634, visit us online at ChrisWestPlumbing.com, or email us at customer@chriswestplumbing.com.