Main Sewer Line Cleaning in Visalia, CA

Visalia was settled in 1852, which makes it one of the oldest towns in the San Joaquin Valley, and the older central neighbourhoods carry housing with cast iron and early vitrified clay beneath. Those laterals are long past design life, and the typical finding is a bore substantially narrowed by a century of corrosion and deposit, presenting as a house that drains slowly everywhere and has got worse by the decade rather than one that blocks suddenly.

The ground is valley floor with dense clay and hardpan layers, cemented horizons that sit at a consistent depth, hold water above them and generally have to be broken rather than dug. That makes excavation here more expensive than the depth alone implies, and it means the ground around a lateral can stay wet long after a storm has passed.

This part of the valley sits close to the centre of California's groundwater subsidence problem. The area around Corcoran, a short distance west of here, recorded some of the most severe land settlement measured anywhere in the state during the drought years, and subsidence across the wider Tulare basin has been serious enough to damage canals and destroy well casings. Permanent, uneven ground settlement takes the fall out of a buried lateral, and it is distinct from seasonal clay movement because it does not reverse.

Visalia also has an exceptional valley oak canopy, including the old groves preserved at Mooney Grove and Kaweah Oaks. Valley oaks are large, long-lived trees with substantial root systems, and in a climate with a completely dry summer lasting five or six months a sewer lateral is one of the few dependable moisture sources in the ground. Where a joint has opened, those roots find it, and with no dormant season regrowth after cutting is quicker than in colder states.