Sewer Pipe Replacement Only Weeks Away for 21 Grosse Pointe Homes

A crew will replace a 900-foot sanitary sewer pipe in mid-September with in what officials have described as a minimally invasive method, pipe-bursting. 

The method will allow for two major holes to be dug rather than digging up the backyards of numerous residents on University and Rivard streets. The most important hole will be dug near Kercheval and St. Paul, where the new 8-inch pipe will be threaded into the proper location. 

A tool is put into the current pipe and essentially travels through the hole before the new pipe bursts the old pipe into fragments; this allows the new pipe to take its place, city employee Frank Schulte explained.

The project will cost $189,975 and was unanimously approved by the city council. According to the proposal submitted to council, the new pipe will increase the flow capacity, reducing back-up potentials and improving overall service to those homes. 

City manager Pete Dame told the council the project was not anticipated for the budget, as the partial collapse happened when the budget was being approved. The money, however, will come from the capital improvement section of the Water and Sewer Fund. 

Several homes serviced by the existing pipe have flooded this year as a result of the collapse, which has allowed for backups in the system, Dame said. 

Dame also said he is planning for a series of sewer improvements for next year and that the city should plan for replacing the aging pipes in groups before their conditions worsen, as this particular pipe did. 

Residents will have limited use of their commodes during the installation but it will return to unlimited use quickly. Each house will be hooked up to the new pipe within 24 hours of it actually being installed in the ground, Schulte said.

City officials spoke highly of the pipe-bursting method, explaining it saves a great deal of digging and restoration work from having to be done in every resident's backyard. 

The pipe runs from Kercheval to St. Paul and is underground between the houses that back up to each other on University and Rivard.