Van Nuys is one of the older San Fernando Valley communities, founded before the First World War, and it carries two distinct generations of sewer lateral as a result. The pre-war core along and around the civic centre has cast iron and early vitrified clay, now eighty to a hundred years old, failing by loss of bore as scale and corrosion build on the pipe wall. The much larger postwar expansion that filled the surrounding streets from the late 1940s through the 1960s is mid-century vitrified clay, with Orangeburg fibre conduit in a significant share of those tracts.
That Orangeburg window matters more in the Valley than almost anywhere else in California, because the Valley's postwar tract boom was one of the largest building programmes in the country and it landed squarely in the years when bituminised fibre conduit was in common use. Orangeburg absorbs moisture, delaminates and deforms out of round under soil load, and it can be neither jetted nor lined. Identifying it on camera before anyone quotes a repair is the difference between a sensible plan and a wasted one.
These are slab-on-grade houses, which changes how a main line failure presents. There is no basement, so when the lateral blocks the wastewater surfaces at the lowest opening in the system, typically a ground-floor shower pan or bathtub. People frequently call about a shower problem when what they have is a main line problem showing up at the shower.
The Valley's street trees, heavily ficus and liquidambar through these neighbourhoods, then supply the roots that enter wherever a clay joint has opened under the annual soil cycle.
Around Van Nuys
We regularly work near:
- 📍Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area
- 📍Lake Balboa
- 📍Van Nuys Airport
- 📍Van Nuys Civic Center
Main Sewer Line Cleaning in Van Nuys — Local Notes
- •Pre-war core carries cast iron and early clay; the larger postwar expansion carries mid-century clay and Orangeburg
- •The Valley's postwar tract boom coincided with the Orangeburg era, so fibre conduit is unusually common here
- •Orangeburg can be neither jetted nor lined, making material identification the first step on any job
- •Slab-on-grade construction means a blocked main line surfaces in a ground-floor shower or tub
- •Ficus and liquidambar street trees supply roots to any clay joint that has opened