Commercial Sewer Pipe Lining
Commercial sewer and drain repair in Denver
Commercial drain lines in Denver run under slabs, through century-old brick walls and up twenty stories of hotel bathrooms, and almost none of them can be reached with a shovel without closing the business. This page explains how building drains, sewer services and vertical stacks are rebuilt in place, and how the work is sequenced so a restaurant, a hotel or a lofts building keeps operating.
Buildings that cannot be dug
The commercial pipe problems in Denver cluster around a few building types. In LoDo and RiNo, brick warehouses from the 1880s through the 1920s have been turned into lofts, offices, breweries and galleries, and their original clay building drains still run under slabs that now carry polished concrete floors and tenant improvements worth more than the pipe. Along Colfax and the other old commercial strips, restaurants push grease, food solids and hot dishwater down lines that were sized for a hardware store. Downtown hotels and high-rises carry cast iron soil stacks and roof drains that have been rusting inside the walls since the 1950s and 1960s. Apartment buildings along the Colfax corridor and in Capitol Hill run shared laterals that serve dozens of units from one aging clay or iron run. In every case the pipe is in the worst possible place to excavate and the building cannot afford the downtime a trench requires.
Rebuilding drains from inside
Cured-in-place lining handles most of this. A horizontal building drain under a slab is lined from a cleanout or a floor drain, with the liner sized to the host pipe and cured by heat or ultraviolet light, and the finished pipe is continuous from entry to exit with no joints for roots or grease to catch on. Laterals out to the main are lined the same way, straight across the sidewalk and the street without a cut. Vertical stacks are lined downward from above and the branch connections at each floor are reopened with a cutter guided by camera. Where a lateral has collapsed, or where the building has grown past what a four-inch line can carry, pipe bursting replaces it with a larger polyethylene pipe from two small pits. The independent explanation of cured-in-place methods at the CIPP reference covers the materials and the standards involved.
Grease, scale and the jetter
Nothing is lined until it is clean, and in commercial buildings cleaning is most of the challenge. Restaurant lines carry a lining of grease that must be cut back to bare pipe with hot-water jetting and sometimes mechanical descaling; cast iron stacks carry tuberculation that is chained off before the camera can even see the wall. Grease interceptors are inspected and serviced so the lined pipe is not refouled in a month. A building that has been jetting the same line every quarter for years is a building whose line is rough, scaled or offset inside, and a liner usually ends the cycle, because a smooth continuous wall gives grease nothing to grip.
Scheduling around the business
Commercial trenchless work in Denver is planned backward from the hours the building can spare. Kitchens are lined between close and prep. Hotels are done riser by riser with one column of rooms blocked at a time. Loft buildings are notified by stack and floor. A typical sequence runs camera survey, written scope with a shutdown plan, cleaning, lining or bursting, and a final camera record delivered to the owner and, when relevant, to the building's engineer or the lender. the verified installer covering Denver works from that sequence and delivers the footage at both ends of it. The reference list of verified installers is at the verified installer directory.
Permits, the sidewalk and the alley
Within the city the owner holds the service line to the main, and the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure permits work on it through the Sewer Use and Drainage Permit. Downtown and in the older commercial districts the main is frequently in the alley, which is also the loading zone, the trash corridor and the fire access, so the city's right-of-way permit governs how a truck and a pit can occupy it and for how long. A trenchless crew needs one parking space and a cleanout for most jobs, which keeps the permit simple and the alley open. Much of central Denver still drains to combined sewers, and a service line with open joints adds stormwater to that system during every summer storm, which is one reason a leaking commercial lateral tends to draw attention from the city as well as the tenants.
What the owner receives
A commercial job closes with the post-repair video, a plan of the lines treated, the permit sign-off and a written warranty on the liner. For a building that will be sold, refinanced or converted, that package answers the due-diligence questions about the drains before they are asked, and it ends the quarterly jetting bill that was quietly becoming the largest line item in the maintenance budget.
Estimates are free. Call now: (720) 606-6223.
Commercial services in Denver
Trenchless Sewer Repair
Repair or replace a failed sewer line with little or no excavation.
Sewer Pipe Lining (CIPP)
A resin-saturated liner cured in place forms a new, jointless pipe inside the old one.
Pipe Bursting
A bursting head splits the old pipe while pulling new HDPE pipe in behind it, through two small pits.
Sectional Point Repair
A short liner fixes one bad spot and leaves the rest of a sound line alone.
Sewer Camera Inspection
See what is actually wrong before anyone quotes a fix.
Hydro Jetting
High-pressure water strips roots, grease and scale so the pipe can be inspected and lined.
Sewer Line Repair & Replacement
When a line cannot be lined: spot excavation or trenchless replacement, chosen from the footage.
Questions about commercial work in Denver
Can a restaurant stay open while its drain lines are lined?+
Usually, with planning. Jetting and camera work happen after close, and lining is scheduled for the slowest stretch of the week, often overnight, so the kitchen loses a shift rather than a weekend. Grease traps and interceptors are inspected and pumped first, because a liner installed over grease will not bond.
How are vertical stacks repaired in hotels and high-rises in Denver?+
With liners inverted down the stack from the roof or an upper-floor cleanout, cured in place, and reopened at each branch with a robotic cutter. Nothing is cut out of the walls. A building near downtown with cast iron stacks from the 1950s or 1960s can be done riser by riser so only one column of rooms is out of service at a time.
Who is responsible for the sewer service under a downtown sidewalk?+
The property owner, up to the connection with the city main. The main itself belongs to the city. That makes the stretch under the sidewalk and street the owner's most expensive liability, and it is the stretch that a liner or a bursting pull crosses without opening the pavement.
What permits apply to commercial sewer work in Denver?+
A Sewer Use and Drainage Permit from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure covers work on the private service line, and a right-of-way permit is required for any staging or excavation in the street, alley or sidewalk. Food-service properties also have grease interceptor requirements that the installer checks before lining a kitchen line. Properties in Denver County outside the city limits answer to their own district.
How do I get a price?+
Call (720) 606-6223 or use the form and describe the building and the symptom. A camera survey of the affected lines comes first, the footage is delivered with a written scope, and the proposal is built from it with a shutdown schedule attached. Estimates are free; call now.