Camera inspection: $300–$750
The first and non-negotiable step. Most operators credit it against the works if you proceed.
A cracked or root-damaged drain does not have to mean a trench through the garden. A resin liner is cured inside the existing pipe from an access point you already have, sealing every joint along the run, and the surface above is never touched.
A resin-saturated liner is drawn into the existing pipe through an access point, inflated so it presses against the wall, and cured until it hardens. What you are left with is a continuous pipe inside the old one, with no joints along its length and a slightly smaller bore than the original.
Nothing is excavated, and the cured surface is smoother than the clay or concrete it lines, so flow is typically maintained or improved despite the small loss of diameter. On a property where a driveway, mature garden or paving sits over the line, that is the whole argument.
The most expensive time to discover a failing sewer is after new tiling has gone down. The second most expensive is after the slab for an extension has been poured over it.
A camera run costs a fraction of either and takes an hour. If you are getting quotes for a renovation on a house of this age, book it in the same fortnight. Where relining is needed it is far cheaper before the works than after.
Shallow soil over Shire sandstone shifts with wet and dry cycles, opening pipe joints and creating bellies where sludge settles.
Reactive clay soil moves with the seasons, lifting in the wet and shrinking back in a dry spell. Rigid drainage laid through it gets flexed every year, and the joints are where that movement is absorbed until they stop absorbing it.
It is the reason drainage faults on these soils cluster after a long dry followed by heavy rain. The pipe did not fail that week; it finished failing that week.
On a clay line the barrel is usually fine. What has gone is the mortar or rubber ring at each joint, and there is one every few hundred millimetres, which is a great many small openings after sixty or eighty years in the ground.
The eucalypts lining Kirrawee’s streets and reserves invade old earthenware joints, matting into blockages that stop entire lines.
That matters for the quote. You are not replacing a pipe, you are sealing a long series of joints, and a liner does the whole run at once rather than patching them one at a time.
Heavy rain sheets off roofs, roads and the rail corridor faster than older pits can cope, backing up stormwater lines in low pockets.
Most people associate relining with sewers, but stormwater suffers the same failures and reline just as well: cracked lengths, open joints, roots, and sections that have silted because the fall has flattened. On a property that floods in every serious downpour, the line is often the reason rather than the rain.
The camera run matters more here than anywhere. Clearing a surcharging pit at the height of a storm tells you almost nothing; the same line inspected on a dry day tells you whether you have a blockage or a defect.
A crack that opens in summer and closes in winter produces a fault that comes and goes, which is maddening to diagnose and very easy to dismiss as bad luck.
A liner is continuous through the affected length, so seasonal movement no longer has a joint to work on. On reactive ground that is the difference between a repair that lasts and one that reappears the next dry summer.
An open joint leaks in both directions. On a low-lying block that means stormwater and groundwater entering the sewer through cracks, which is called infiltration, and it quietly overloads a line that would otherwise cope.
It shows up as a system that backs up in wet weather and behaves perfectly in dry. If that is the pattern, sealing the run is the fix, and no amount of clearing will reproduce the result.
The first and non-negotiable step. Most operators credit it against the works if you proceed.
Domestic sewer across Sydney in 2026. Longer single runs sit at the lower end of it.
Seals one defect. Right where the rest of the run is sound and the ground is stable.
Length, diameter and how many branches need reinstating are what move the number inside that band.
Excavation is only half the cost. Replacing the driveway or garden above it is the other half.
These are market ranges, not our price. Nothing is quoted before the survey, and nothing starts before you agree it. Figures here are indicative of the 2026 Sydney market rather than a quote from us, you get your own number as a fixed price before any work starts.
Leave your details and a licensed plumber will call back to arrange the survey. No quote is given before someone has seen inside the pipe.
The questions that come up before every relining job, answered with real numbers.
Call for the fastest answer, or send the form and we will arrange a camera survey before anything is quoted.
Leave your details and our local Kirrawee team will call you back fast.