Our home was built in the early 1960s; it’s a vintage four bedroom ranch with a nice-sized backyard.
In 2013, our interior plumbing was backing up at an alarming rate. We called in professional plumbers and discovered a sewer pipe failure.
When you have a sewer pipe failure, the pipe leading from your home’s infrastructure out to the city sewer may be punctured by and filled up with tree roots, or the flow is greatly reduced due to gunky build-up along the interior of the pipe.
The pipe is no longer a viable conduit for the water and other waste that flows down the drains. The plumbing backs up because the pipes get clogged.
Orangeburg pipe is not only vulnerable to tree root puncture and clogging, it also loses its shape; it turns from a round pipe into an oval shaped mass of collapsing fibrous gunk.
That’s because it’s made from asphalt, wood chips and asbestos. It’s like particle board for your plumbing.
It was used in cities and suburbs and beyond, from 1946 though the 1970s. Then along comes plastic piping and Orangeburg is no longer used in new constructions.
It’s 2013, and we’ve called in the professionals to find the cause of our plumbing problems.
The plumber snaked a camera into the main artery of the plumbing and took a look. There’s a whole section where the pipe is simply gone. That’s right. It disintegrated. Down the line there’s more damage, so the pipe line from the house to the city sewer connection – the sewer discharge line – has to be replaced.
We’d posted a detailed article about the project online back in 2013. The justaz.com website has been updated several times since then, but we thought we would bring this piece back, with a bit of updating as well.
But the part that follows is the original description, from January of 2013:
The plumbers from (the company) Option 1 worked until around 8pm the night of the 28th, getting the area prepped for work the following day. They marked where to dig to reach the Orangeburg pipe and connect up the new pipe with the city line.
On the morning of the 29th, the bobcat arrived. The guys would have to dig down just over 7 feet to reach the connection point; this is located just in front of the shed. They had to take out one section of sidewalk, but hey, it’s just a concrete slab. Small price to pay for decent plumbing.
The digging started at this point, and when they got down far enough, I took a photo of what the Orangeburg pipe looked like. It looked like mud, because, really, there wasn’t much pipe there.
Then, the bobcat tore up the ground at the opposite end, at the connecting point to the house, where it’s only three feet down. But guess what? The Orangeburg pipe is pretty much disintegrated along there as well.
So it went throughout the day, with one guy running the bobcat and the other guy shoveling aside the heavy clay soil so well known to gardeners and builders here in the valley of the sun. As they made their way across the property, the trench went from three feet to four feet to five feet to six feet – until it met up with the seven foot deep hole at the other end.
They cleaned out some of the debris from the trench, including bits of Orangeburg pipe. Then, the new pipe went in. By that time, it was too dangerous for me to be out there, because the soil was piled up and somewhat slippery. The trench lay to the other side like a scary pit, so I stayed inside the house and left it to the professionals.
The guys worked until after 8 pm again, checking the plumbing in the house before filling in the trench.
Back to 2026, and the PVC pipe has shown no signs of failure. It should also be noted that the plumbers put in a clean-out, a system you can find out more about in our video, “How to Fix a Cracked Clean Out Pipe.”
Most notable is the cost of such a venture. We had to pay about $3000, (in 2013 dollars) but in many municipalities, if the connection is under the sidewalk or road in front of or behind your home, it may run you much more, possibly $10,000.
There is no other solution to failed Orangeburg but to replace it – all of it. And if you find the plumbing in your older home – built pre-PVC- regularly backing up…. you may have Orangeburg. Know you have our sympathies.
