How to Replace a Ceramic Sewer Pipe

Vitreous clay tile pipes transferred water across a continent for the Roman Empire and made up municipal and home sanitary sewers until the advent of polyvinyl chloride sewer pipe in the 1980s. It follows that a pipe would occasionally succumb to pressure from earthquakes, tree roots or pressure from surrounding ground or overhead heavy traffic. Although the process for replacing broken pipe with PVC pipe is similar, small repairs with VCT pipe are made easier by the wide fitting at the end of each piece called a bell.

Shovels
Hammer and scraper
Mineral spirits
Clean cloths
Gravel or sand
Replacement pipe
Chain-type pipe cutter
O-rings and gaskets
Joint lubricant
Adjustable couplings

Instructions

- 1
  Dig under each joint until you can run your hand under the wide bell at one end of the pipe and along the pipe to the end of the broken section. Take out broken pipe as you excavate.
- 2
  Clean the ends of intact pipes with mineral spirits to remove remaining lubricant.
- 3
  Set the replacement pipe in to check its size and shorten it with a chain pipe cutter if necessary. Pipe ends should fit snugly into bells on both ends. If you can’t work a pipe up and down a bit to ease the new piece in, excavate a bit farther along the old pipe so it can move.
- 4
  Clean both ends of the new pipe and the exposed ends of the old pipes. Stretch rubber O-rings around the male ends of each pipe and sit gaskets into both bells. Run a screwdriver around under each O-rings to stretch it evenly around the pipe end and wipe pipe joint lubricant around the O-rings. Slide a flexible coupling over each bell.
- 5
  Tip the new section into the old pipe, one end at a time. Pull each coupling forward over the bell and tighten it until it snugly holds both the bell and the end of the next pipe.
- 6
  Nudge a layer of gravel under the pipe with a shovel, taking care to fill all air pockets. The pipes should sit on a bed of gravel, not in it. Gravel should cover just the bottom third of the pipe’s circumference.
- 7
  Check to ensure that the three segments are supported evenly in gravel. They should decline toward the sewer main without dips or angles that can cause leaks at the connections.
- 8
  Fill the trench back in after any required tests or inspections.

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Plumbing