Two materials common in older Wasatch Front housing, and two very different ways they fail.
Older neighborhoods along the Wasatch Front were built with whatever piping was standard when they went in, and in a lot of cases that means either cast iron or, in some mid-century homes, a bituminous fiber pipe generally known by the brand name Orangeburg. Neither is a sign of poor upkeep. It is simply what a house of that era was built with.
Cast iron corrodes from the inside over decades. Rust and mineral buildup, sometimes called tuberculation, gradually narrows the interior of the pipe, which slows flow and traps solids even before any structural failure occurs. Eventually corrosion can pit all the way through the pipe wall or crack a weakened section, particularly at joints.
Orangeburg was never intended as a long-term material, and it fails differently than cast iron — rather than corroding, it tends to absorb moisture, lose structural strength, and deform into an oval shape or delaminate in layers. A section can collapse partially without ever cracking in a way that would show as an obvious break.
A camera inspection identifies which material you actually have and how far along the deterioration is — a distinction that matters because a scaled-down cast iron line and a deforming Orangeburg line call for different judgment about whether lining is still viable or whether the section is too far gone for anything but replacement.
A home's age suggests what material is likely underground, but it is not a substitute for looking. Sections have been replaced over the decades in plenty of older homes, and newer construction is not automatically PVC throughout. The camera settles it either way.
Tell us what the drains are doing and we will match you with a contractor who diagnoses before recommending a repair.
Get Matched With a Sewer ContractorTell us which fixtures are affected and how often — we will follow up to size the visit and get a camera on the line.