A quick glance at In-house Pipe Relining

We've come a long way, in terms of what cured-in-place pipe rehabilitation is and what it has become.

Not to go too deep into the history and the early beginnings of relining, I'm just gonna stick with where we are today. Let's start off by taking a quick couple of minutes (1:47 to be exact) and see this great video produced by one of the coolest CIPP material manufacturers in the world.

Without further ado, here's Brawoliner's explainer video for CIPP:

As we can learn from the video, the modern small diameter relining conducted inside buildings is quite a straight forward process. The basic steps of the process can be easily torn down into few bullet points:

1. When doing a complete relining project, you always start off by cleaning the pipes.
2. After the cleanup, it's time to do the initial video inspection to determine the condition of the pipeline under work.
3. After the cleaning, inspection and pipeline mapping is conducted, it's time to prepare the lining materials. Mixing resins, impregnating the measured & cut liners with them, and conducting the actual installation & curing process.
4. After the liners are installed, it's time to do some final touches through sanding, cleaning, cutting etc.
5. After all the installations are completed, conduct a final inspection to file a recording of the completed work for your customer.

Simple enough, right?

Of course there's much more to the process than meets the eye. As you start working on a relining jobsite, one of the most important factors is to cover up your working area in a correct manner. Not only does this show exceptional professionalism to your customers (after all, you come to their home so it's just basic common sense to make sure you'll leave it the same or even better as it was as you came in), but it also shields you from several things like claims about resin-coated floor panels and other damages your work within the house could bring.

The jobsite shielding is just one example of the attention to detail a professional reliner should always pay attention to.

How do you carry yourself in front of your customers? The answer to this question is something that either makes or breaks a pipelining pro.

Another thing worthy of thoughtful consideration is tooling. There are a lot of different options and solutions available in the market today.

As this is just a brief glance into the in-house relining process, we'll just drop some of the main tools that are necessary for you to get the job done in safe and professional manner. So, based on the process steps above, we can safely name couple of main systems you need to have in place tool-wise.

Inspection Equipment

Proper Inspection Camera.

Ridgid SeeSnakes are probably one of the most common cameras available in the market. There are also a bunch of other great options. MyTana, MiniCam, MinCam, Kummert, IBAK and Ritec to mention a few for starters. The variety of cameras available is astonishing, and the feature set you'll be able to pick can be overwhelming. We highly suggest you start off by picking up a camera that will be able to support you in various circumstances. Working distance of 30 meters (100ft) is a great place to start. As you never know what you're facing on jobsites, pick a camera with a built-in locator beacon so that you'll be able to track it underground. Make sure that your camera can record videos in a form that you can export from the camera.

Locating device for the locating beacon.

As you use your camera and find yourself in need of locating the camera head underground, you'll need a locating device suitable for your camera's locator. One of the most common locators in the market today is probably, again, Ridgid NaviTrack Scout.

Drain Cleaning Machines

High Speed Drain Cleaning Machine

As you will be doing A LOT of drain cleaning and descaling, pick a system that will support your most common types of work. Picote Solutions has an awesome selection of high speed units for basic cleaning as well as more heavy duty descaling, concrete removal and they also offer a great set of tools and accessories to go with the machines. Picote is practically the household name in the market today, but there are other options available as well.

Drain Cleaning by Drill Setup

Lot of pros are going with the drill setup nowadays being more lightweight and affordable option. Read more about Drain Cleaning Drill Setups by Clicking HERE.

In short, the drill setup includes Cordless Drill Driver, Drill-to-Shaft Connector, Flexible Shaft and Chain Knocker / Brush / Drill Head.

Inversion Equipment

Basic Installation Equipment for Lining.

Working with modern liners and resins is possible with many different pieces of equipment. One of the most common ones are Inversion Drums, Inversion Cannons, Continuous Feed Cannons (Liner Jets) and Patch Lining tools + Connection Liner Installation Tools. In addition to the actual lining process, there are also a lot of great tools for pipe rehabilitation in terms of Brush and Spray Coating - more information about these can be found in our Pipe Coating Basics guide (link). When choosing the right equipment for your jobs, always keep in mind that most restrictions that come with the installation equipment variations are regarding the length of the liners you can work with, and the diameters of the pipes you can work in. Based on your most common needs, you should equip yourself with tools that can easily serve installations in your common pipe sizes and lengths. Pipemade is an official reseller for Picote's Inversion Equipment, as we feel that these powerhouses are one of the most thought-out pieces of equipment and they never disappoint in terms of quality and service-life.

Support Equipment

As most systems we use in relining are not self-sustained, you are going to need quite a bit of miscellaneous solutions. For inversion equipment, you'll be needing a powerful compressor with necessary airhoses. You'll be needing Steam Generator for supplying enough heat for elevated liner curing.

Conclusion

The complete list of tools and accessories needed to get the job done can be quite exhausting, and most newcomers tend to learn the needs hard way - as you pick up work, the worst case is that you only figure out needs when you're already on jobsite and you'll have to start procuring things to finish the job. You don't wanna do that.

As this post was supposed to be a brief look into what modern in-house Pipe Rehabilitation is, I think I should call it a day soon, as this could easily get out of hand.

I think we can all agree that most of us loved watching videos back in the elementary school as well so I'm just gonna continue on the same path here. So just to wrap everything up, here's another, a bit more concise video from Brawo Systems outlining the general process of relining. Enjoy!

Have an awesome day!