No-dig pipe repair on the Lower North Shore.
Cracked or damaged pipe repaired in place in Lane Cove — relining a stack or a shared line without opening walls, slabs or common areas.
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Lane Cove filled out after the Second World War, so a great deal of its house drainage went in as one generation and is now around seventy years old together. The practical consequence is that a fault at one joint says something about the joints either side of it — which makes lining a run more sensible than patching a metre. With 62.4% of dwellings now flats, the other half of the work is stacks in buildings.
Seventy-year-old post-war joints failing in sequence along a run, or a loaded stack in one of the many apartment blocks. The building’s age predicts which.
Because opening up a building is a different order of disruption. This is the part of a drainage repair people do not price until an excavator is already on site.
Established gardens on the post-war blocks, with bushland, creeks and river frontage through roughly 16% of the municipality held as public recreation land. Reserve boundaries constrain excavation in some directions.
A liner goes in through an opening that already exists. Nothing above the pipe has to move.
A peninsula where the Lane Cove River opens, with bushland, creeks and steep ground through it. Wet creek-side ground is slow to trench and unpredictable to backfill.
Lane Cove sits in the Municipality of Lane Cove, postcode 2066.
Local figures sourced from: ABS 2021 Census QuickStats — Lane Cove · Lane Cove, New South Wales — Wikipedia
Post-war jointed earthenware across large parts of the suburb, consistently aged, with modern PVC under the apartment stock added since.
No trench, no spoil, and nothing above the pipe disturbed. The whole job runs through an existing access point.
The line is inspected end to end so the damage is located and measured. Nothing is quoted from the surface.
Roots are cut out and the pipe wall is jetted back to bare material — a liner will not bond to a coated pipe.
A resin-saturated liner is drawn into position through an existing access point and inflated against the host pipe.
The resin hardens in hours rather than days, forming a new pipe inside the old one with no joints for roots to re-enter.
Any branch lines are cut back open robotically, and a final camera pass confirms the result.
Not every damaged pipe should be relined, and we will say so. These are the cases where it genuinely wins here.
Lining the length costs little more than lining part of it.
Excavation there is constrained; lining is not.
No riser opened and nobody displaced.
Relining costs more per metre than excavation. It is usually cheaper overall, and this is why:
| Dig and replace | Relining | |
|---|---|---|
| Excavation | Trench the full length, remove and replace the pipe, backfill | None — the work runs through an existing access point |
| What comes up | Lawn, garden, paving, driveway or slab above the line | Nothing |
| Time on site | Days on a long or deep run | Usually one day for a typical run |
| Reinstatement | Priced separately and often the larger half of the bill | Not applicable |
| Result | New pipe, with joints | A jointless liner inside the host pipe |
| Design life | Depends on material and bedding | 50 years on a correctly installed liner |
The per-metre comparison is the one that misleads. Excavation quotes routinely exclude spoil removal and reinstatement, which is where a dig job gets expensive — and on some properties the reinstatement is simply not possible at any price.
These are typical ranges across the Sydney market — not Voyager’s price list, but a realistic yardstick to judge any quote against, including ours.
| Pipe relining, per lineal metre | $450 – $800 |
| Pipe relining, typical whole job | $4,000 – $10,000 |
| Patch repair, single damaged section | $1,500 – $3,000 |
| Junction reinstatement | $300 – $600 |
| Excavate and replace, per metre | $300 – $600 |
| Driveway reinstatement after a dig job, per sqm | $100 – $200 |
| CCTV drain inspection | $250 – $550 |
| Cutting tree roots from a line | $400 – $1,200 |
Voyager prices by the job, not by the hour, so the number you approve is the number you pay. A camera survey happens before any figure is given — a quote for relining that has not looked down the pipe is a guess.
Most Lane Cove properties that ring about relining need a camera first. We will tell you straight — including when clearing the line is the whole job.
A correctly installed liner carries a 50-year design life, and it cures in hours rather than days — so the property is back in normal use the same week rather than the same month.
Where a whole street’s drainage is the same age, lining a full run is what stops the next joint along becoming next year’s problem.
Roots come back through joints. A liner has none.
Voyager covers the whole Lower North Shore. These are the closest to Lane Cove:
No. That is the whole point of it. The liner is drawn in through an existing access point — usually an inspection opening or shaft already on the property — and cured in place against the old pipe. On a creek or reserve boundary it means no excavation in constrained ground; in a building it means no riser opened.
Across the Sydney market, relining runs about $450–$800 per lineal metre, with a typical whole job landing between $4,000 and $10,000 and a single-section patch around $1,500–$3,000. Those are market ranges rather than Voyager’s price list. Whether the run is failing at one point or generally. On drainage this uniformly aged it is usually the latter, which changes a patch into a length.
Per metre, no — excavation is cheaper per metre. Overall it usually is. A dig figure in a building also has to carry access through occupied lots, common areas out of use and works approvals — none of which appear on the per-metre rate. On some properties the reinstatement is not possible at any price, which settles it entirely.
A correctly installed liner carries a 50-year design life. It outlasts what it replaced because it has no joints along its length — and joints are where roots get in, where ground movement opens a gap, and where old earthenware fails first. For an owners corporation that is the relevant number — one authorised job against another decade of reactive callouts on the same line.
A typical residential run is a single day on site, and the resin cures in hours rather than days. Coordinating building access and notifying affected lots usually takes longer than the installation does.
Most can, but not all — and we will say so rather than sell you something that will not work. A pipe that has collapsed completely, or lost so much of its shape that there is nothing left to line against, needs replacing. In Lane Cove the host pipe is usually a good candidate: seventy-year-old post-war joints failing in sequence along a run, or a loaded stack in one of the many apartment blocks. The building’s age predicts which.
In Lane Cove, usually the whole run. Much of the suburb’s house drainage was laid post-war as one generation and is around seventy years old together, so a failure at one joint says something about the joints either side of it. Where the survey shows the rest is genuinely sound we will say so — but sectional repairs on uniformly aged pipe tend to be false economy.
The owners corporation, where the line is common property — which generally means any pipe serving more than one lot. We deal with the strata or building manager directly and provide the camera footage they need to approve the work. Where the line serves only your lot, it is your decision.
Camera survey first, a fixed price agreed before the work starts, and no excavation.
Voyager Plumbing · NSW Contractor Licence 476657C
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Page reviewed and updated 20 August 2026
