Tree Roots in Sewer Pipes: Fix or Reline?

Once a camera confirms tree roots in your sewer, you have three realistic options: clear the roots and accept they will return, patch the specific joint they came through, or reline the pipe and shut them out permanently. None of these is automatically right. Around Brighton and Bayside we recommend each of them regularly, for different drains and different owners. The trick is matching the fix to what the footage shows and to your own plans for the property.

What we would push back on is deciding without footage. A quote for relining a drain nobody has inspected is a guess, and a cheap clear on a drain that is structurally failing just defers a bigger bill. Every option below assumes the line has been cleared and inspected first, so the decision is based on evidence.

Clearing means cutting the roots out of the pipe, usually with a high-pressure water jetter fitted with a root-cutting head, or a mechanical eel with cutting blades. Done properly, it restores full flow and the drain behaves normally again.

What clearing cannot do is close the joint the roots entered through. The parent root remains at the pipe wall, and regrowth is close to certain. Depending on the tree and the season, that might mean another blockage in six months or several years.

Clearing on its own makes sense when the pipe is structurally sound apart from root intrusion, when regrowth has historically been slow, or when the property is due for renovation or demolition and the drainage will be replaced anyway. Plenty of Bayside owners run this way deliberately, with a clear every year or two treated as routine maintenance. It is a legitimate choice as long as it is an informed one.

If the camera shows one or two bad joints in an otherwise healthy run, a localised repair can target just those points. That can be a dig-up and replacement of a short section, or a patch liner: a short sleeve of resin-impregnated material positioned over the defect from inside the pipe and cured in place, sealing the joint without excavation.

Patching suits drains where the damage is genuinely isolated. Where it goes wrong is on old earthenware lines with dozens of joints of similar age and condition. Sealing the one joint that has failed does nothing for its neighbours, and roots simply move to the next weakest collar. If the footage shows widespread joint wear, a patch is often just the first instalment of a full reline paid for the expensive way.

Relining creates a continuous new pipe inside the old one. A flexible liner saturated with resin is inverted or winched through the cleaned drain, inflated against the pipe wall and cured, leaving a smooth, jointless tube from one access point to the next. No joints means no entry points, which is the whole reason roots got in.

For the older streets of Brighton, Brighton East and Elwood, relining has a second advantage: no excavation. The sewer often runs under established gardens, brick paving, driveways or the house itself, and digging it up can cost more in reinstatement than in plumbing. A reline is done through existing access points, usually in a day or two for a typical house drain.

Relining is not universal. The host pipe must hold its shape well enough to support the liner, so a collapsed or badly deformed section still needs excavation and replacement first. Junctions with branch lines need to be reopened and, ideally, sealed with junction patches, and a very short run with easy access is sometimes cheaper to simply dig up and replace in PVC.

When we sit down with homeowners over camera footage, the decision usually comes down to a handful of questions.

Whatever you choose, insist on seeing the camera footage before and after the work, and keep a copy. In Victoria, drainage work must be carried out by a licensed or registered plumber, and significant work comes with a compliance certificate. The footage plus the certificate is your evidence of what was done, and it is genuinely useful when you sell. If a quote arrives without an inspection behind it, ask what the price is actually based on. We inspect first for every root-affected drain we quote across Brighton and Bayside, because it is the only way the advice means anything.