CIPP lining cures a new pipe inside your old one, no slab demolition. It's the cheaper path when the pipe qualifies, and we won't pretend yours does if it doesn't.
The number that scares people is the repipe number. Thirty, forty, sometimes fifty thousand dollars to jackhammer the slab, dig out old pipe, and pour the floor back. When a 4-point report flags your cast iron, that is the figure most homeowners assume they are staring down.
A lot of the time, you are not. If the pipe qualifies, lining does the same job for a fraction of the cost and never touches your floor.
CIPP stands for cured-in-place pipe. The idea is simple. Instead of removing the old cast iron, we build a new pipe inside it.
We clean the existing pipe first, usually with a hydro jet, to knock out the rust scale and buildup. Then we pull an epoxy-saturated liner through the pipe and inflate it against the walls. The epoxy cures hard. When it sets, you have a smooth, jointless plastic pipe formed inside the old cast iron shell.
No concrete gets cut. We work through existing access points. For most homes the crew is in and out in a day or two, and you keep your floor.
Lining works when the old pipe is structurally there but damaged. It needs a solid host to bond to.
The best candidates are pipes with spalling, scale buildup, and minor channeling, where the wall is thinned but continuous. If the camera shows the pipe still holds its round shape and there is metal all the way around, a liner will restore it to full service. We explain the damage types in cast iron spalling explained.
This is the part most lining companies leave out. A liner is not magic, and it cannot fix a pipe that is no longer there.
If the bottom of the pipe is channeled all the way through, the liner has nothing to press against on the underside. If the pipe is collapsed or crushed, the liner cannot pass through it. If the hubs and joints have separated, a straight liner does not rebuild the connection. In those cases lining is the wrong tool, and installing it anyway just wastes your money before the real problem comes back.
When we find one of those, we say so. That is when we recommend full replacement instead, and we show you on the screen why the liner would not hold.
Lining a typical 2,000 square foot home in this area runs in the ballpark of seventeen thousand dollars, though the real number depends on how much pipe you have and how it is laid out. That is real money. It is also usually a fraction of a full under-slab repipe, and you avoid the demolition and the floor repair on top of it. The full breakdown is in our cost guide, and the head-to-head is in lining vs. replacement.
You cannot line a pipe you have not looked inside. Every lining quote we give starts with a camera inspection, because the footage is the only thing that tells us whether your pipe qualifies. A company that quotes lining over the phone is guessing, and you are the one who pays if the guess is wrong.
A 1971 pool home in Cape Coral, cast iron flagged at renewal. The owner had a repipe quote in hand and was sick about the cost. The camera showed heavy spalling and scale but a pipe that was still round and continuous all the way through. It was a textbook lining candidate. We jetted it clean, lined the run, and the whole job came in around a third of the repipe quote. The insurer accepted the report.
A properly cured liner is a real pipe, not a patch. The epoxy forms a smooth interior that resists the scale and corrosion that killed the cast iron in the first place. Waste moves faster through a smooth wall, so it is also less likely to snag and back up. For a pipe that qualified in the first place, that is the point of the whole job: you get decades of service without ever cutting your slab. What it does not do is rescue a pipe that was already gone, which is why the honest read at the camera stage matters more than any warranty language.
Send us your 4-point report before you accept any repipe quote. We will tell you honestly whether lining is on the table for your home. Upload your report here.
Upload the report or a photo of the pipe. We will read it and tell you what it actually means for your pipes - repair or replace, honestly, no site visit needed. We respond within one business day.