In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry welcome Noah Gavic from Brothers Underground. The conversation delves into Noah’s extensive background in plumbing, the various techniques used in sewer line repair, and the challenges faced in the industry. Noah shares insights on the importance of technology in plumbing, the pricing structures for different services, and the unique challenges of working in the sewer repair field. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of quality work and customer service in the plumbing industry. In this conversation, Noah Gavic discusses the complexities of sewer systems, the evolution of repair techniques, and the challenges posed by infiltration and inflow in urban areas. He highlights innovative technologies used in sewer inspection and repair, shares real-life challenges faced in sewer management, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the responsibilities of homeowners regarding sewer lines. The discussion also touches on the future of sewer repair technologies and the significance of proper installation for longevity.
Check this link to IEB Unite: https://events.iebcoaching.com/IEBUnite2025
Here’s the link to Noah Gavic’s company: https://www.brosunderground.com/
Takeaways
Noah Gavic has 21 years of experience in sewer plumbing.
Brothers Underground focuses on providing quality sewer repair services.
Technology plays a crucial role in modern plumbing solutions.
Pricing for sewer repair varies significantly based on the method used.
Excavation is the most common method for sewer line repair.
Lining and pipe bursting are innovative alternatives to traditional excavation.
Customer service and timely responses are key to success in plumbing.
Understanding local regulations is essential for sewer repair work.
Quality work can prevent future plumbing issues for homeowners.
The plumbing industry faces unique challenges that require specialized knowledge.
Sewer systems rely on gravity and lift stations for waste transport.
Excavation costs can vary significantly based on depth and obstructions.
Lining is often the simplest solution for sewer repairs.
Infiltration and inflow (I&I) can lead to increased costs for cities.
Homeowners are typically responsible for sewer lines up to the city connection.
Innovative technologies like pneumatic grabbers can save costly repairs.
Sewer inspections are crucial during property sales to ensure compliance.
The lifespan of a sewer liner can be up to 100 years if installed correctly.
Cities are incentivized to reduce I&I to avoid fines from waste treatment authorities.
Communication and transparency with customers are key to building trust.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
03:00 Noah’s Background and Brothers Underground
05:57 Scope of Work and Service Areas
09:00 Sewer Line Repair Techniques
11:56 Choosing Between Repair and Replacement
15:01 Technological Innovations in Sewer Repair
17:55 Pricing Structures and Cost Considerations
21:02 Challenges in Sewer Line Work
24:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
29:25 Understanding Sewer Systems and Their Complexities
32:52 The Evolution of Sewer Repair Techniques
36:46 Infiltration and Inflow: Addressing Urban Sewer Challenges
44:40 Innovative Technologies in Sewer Inspection and Repair
49:09 Real-Life Challenges in Sewer Management
53:41 Conclusion and Future Insights
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:01.258)
Welcome back to the structure talk podcast. I’m Ruben Saltzman. I’m here with my co-host Tessa and we have got a special guest on the show today I’ve got Noah Gavic from Brothers Underground Noah. How you doing today?
Noah Gavic (00:17.049)
I’m doing good. How are you?
Reuben Saltzman (00:19.01)
Fantastic. It’s a good day. know, technology glitches. We spent the first 35 minutes of this podcast with me trying to get my microphone working. Why does it just stop some days? That’s okay. We’re here.
Tessa Murry (00:27.152)
you
Tessa Murry (00:33.543)
Hey, it was your turn because it’s been my issues the last few podcasts. So thanks for taking my place.
Reuben Saltzman (00:38.924)
Yeah, we all take turns with us, but we’re good to go now. Technology is working. Before we get into this, I want to give a quick shout out to our show sponsors, IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. I’ve been mentioning for the past several weeks that we got the big conference coming up, IEB Unite. And I just want to a little bit about what we’re going to be talking about. One of the things is going to be the power of connections.
Main topic, everyone under one roof to grow together. And some key points, we’re not gonna just be learning from the stage, you’re gonna be learning with the people sitting next to you. If you wanna surround yourself with people who are ahead of you or trying to get to where you’re going, this is the event for it. So this is a huge conference coming up for home inspectors. If you’re interested, check it out. I will have a link to this event in our show notes.
And it is happening in Texas at the end of May. So that’s what we got coming up. Noah, it’s been a long time coming for you to come on the show. I think Tessa, you got to know Noah a little bit before we hit record here. But Noah and I met through my church at this event we had going on. And we have since gotten to know each other very well. We’ve been doing
a Bible study together at my house. Something, I mean, anyone’s curious, it’s something called Every Man a Warrior. We’ve been doing this since September of last year, meeting together every week. We’ve gotten to know each other very well. But I have heard Noah’s name probably mentioned a half dozen times since we first met by industry professionals just bragging Noah up, talking about what
Tessa Murry (02:32.401)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (02:34.029)
Great company he has how much they have to offer and what a fantastic job they do So it’s not like we just happen to meet at church and I’m gonna refer this guy and send him business because we go to church together they he has an outstanding company and I one of the best experiences we’ve ever had Referring companies to do sewer repairs. So Noah, what if you could just kind of
Tessa Murry (02:38.684)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (02:47.911)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (03:00.145)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (03:03.607)
Take it away a little bit, give us a little bit of background about who you are and who Brothers Underground is and what it is you do on a day-to-day basis.
Noah Gavic (03:14.705)
Okay, well, I’ll try to make it short and sweet here, but it gets little long. Growing up, my dad was a master plumber. I worked with him in the field when I could. I was homeschooled, so it was nice, because he’d take us on spots where we could go help him install. We could go…
Reuben Saltzman (03:33.261)
Tess is pointing me too. I was homeschooled too, yes. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:37.307)
Ruben, not me, Ruben, yeah.
Noah Gavic (03:39.793)
So anyways, he’d take us on stuff. We’d be out soldering pipes for him and helping him. Okay, dripped, know, solder dripped here. Okay, now put the torch here. Okay, start prepping these fittings, flux these. So we grew up in the plumbing industry for years and years. So my dad had his own business. It was called Gavik and Sons Plumbing. He became a franchise called Benjamin Franklin Plumbing. So he got involved with that and he actually got involved with a couple other Ben Franklin franchises.
And their goal was ultimately to grow the business and then sell it. And so they eventually combined and they were one big company. And so they started creating other brands. had Blue Oxygen and Air, Paul Bunyan Plumbing and Drain came out of that as well, which I know you guys had Tim Hammack on the other day. So he, me and him, I know him really well. was my dad, my dad’s company, he’s plumbing manager now. He’s a general manager over there.
Tessa Murry (04:26.311)
you
Reuben Saltzman (04:29.261)
We did, yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:29.553)
Yeah, yeah.
Noah Gavic (04:38.947)
He’s a worth of knowledge, he knows a lot of stuff. So growing up, I grew up side by side working with all those people. So long story short, I’ve been doing, so, but 17, when I was 17 when I started working for my dad, so it’d be 21 years this year here, doing sewer water plumbing. So before they,
Tessa Murry (05:00.103)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (05:06.449)
Before I left my dad’s company to start our own, I was managing his sewer division. So that was, I know, we probably did about five million sales on the sewer side. so me and my two other brothers kind of did all the managing of, I did all the office stuff, they did all the infield as far as the aligning and the excavation repair. So it just kind of made sense. Long story short, my dad ended up selling to a private equity group.
And it just kind of got to a point where it wasn’t for us. And we said, you know what? I think we can do a better job and provide a better experience for those customers on our own. And so I don’t have any ill will for my dad or anybody at Paul Bunning because they still do a great job, but it just made more sense for us to move on to our own and kind of take the reins from there. So that’s kind of the short and sweet of where I’m at. And like I said, been lining sewer pipes for probably was now 17 years out of the 21.
Tessa Murry (05:41.671)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:57.447)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (06:05.873)
So we’ve done that for a long time as well. But yeah, that’s kind of a quick little synopsis of where I’m at.
Tessa Murry (06:12.753)
Wow. How many employees do you have at Brothers Underground, Noah?
Noah Gavic (06:16.529)
Currently we have four field employees and then there’s the three of us brothers so there’s seven total and then we have one additional in-house office staff.
Tessa Murry (06:22.853)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (06:28.719)
Okay. Okay. And you primarily work in the Twin Cities metro area?
Noah Gavic (06:33.435)
We work everywhere. mean, I’ve lined pipe all the way out to Chicago. I’ve gone, there was a school project out there. can go into more depth later on that one, but that was interesting for a swimming pool. I’ve done stuff down in Belle Plaine. I’ve gone all the way up to Duluth to do some mainline patches. I’ve gone out to Wisconsin. We lined a whole bunch of pipe for a school out there and took care of that.
Tessa Murry (06:38.842)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (06:45.575)
Huh.
Tessa Murry (06:53.895)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (07:03.397)
gone out to like pass, Belle Plaine, Chocopee. We pretty much go anywhere as long as obviously the jobs are worth it.
Reuben Saltzman (07:12.375)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (07:12.463)
Yeah, and do you do like government work too or work for municipalities or anything like that? Are you primarily working with homeowners and like on the residential side?
Noah Gavic (07:21.585)
So I would say the majority of our work is going to be residential. But I mean, I do some work for some people that…
Sorry, phone here. They manage shops for Devonis, Burger King. I also work some mechanical shops. So we do a lot of repair or jetting for a company called EA Sween. They’re, you know, the chuck wagon sandwiches and all the Deli Express stuff that they find that. So we had to jet out their facility because it backed up on them and they obviously can’t have that. And so they have these water slices that are like
Reuben Saltzman (07:52.066)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:52.999)
Mm.
Noah Gavic (08:01.125)
I think they’re like 20,000 PSI. They basically slice the sandwiches in half. And so as they go through the production line, and so we jetted their whole sewer system because nobody had really fully done that. And it took us a full day, cost them a decent amount, but we had two jetters running the same time along with a vac truck. We pulled out a five gallon bucket worth of hardware. There was a 22 millimeter socket in there. There’s water jets from like,
Parts just fall off of stuff and so we ended up pulling all this debris out of their line and then they also had a snap off cable retrieved out of the line too. They’d been there for I think like seven years. So they go, we’re not using anybody else because everybody else come up and got us draining but they haven’t fixed our problem. You’ve actually fixed our problem. So they call me back all the time because we fixed the problem.
Tessa Murry (08:42.989)
my goodness.
Tessa Murry (08:50.736)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:54.583)
Sure, sure. And when you say you got a snapped off cable, you’re talking about like a sewer cleaning cable, right? Okay.
Tessa Murry (08:55.173)
Wow, wow.
Noah Gavic (09:00.475)
Correct. Yep. Sewer cleaning cable that was down the line that it snapped off there. So we retrieve that back out for him.
Reuben Saltzman (09:07.106)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (09:07.557)
Wow, wow, amazing.
Reuben Saltzman (09:09.933)
Yeah, you guys have got some cool technology. Some of it might not be appropriate for the podcast. It’s almost like, not that it’s bad, it’s just you have to see it. Like that robot arm that you and I talked about. I don’t know, maybe we’ll get into it. first off, so your bread and butter is gonna be repairing sewer lines.
Noah Gavic (09:10.011)
So.
Tessa Murry (09:15.163)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (09:39.229)
Is that right or is it cleaning sewer lines? mean what’s the focus?
Noah Gavic (09:43.301)
Yeah, no, our bread and butter is repairing sewer lines. mean, sewer lines are probably the majority of what we do, I would say. That’s probably, say, 80, 90 % of what we do. Obviously, in order to repair some sewer lines, you need to clean them. So we’ll also do cleaning if necessary for certain things. And there’s different routes to go on cleaning as well. And then probably, I would say maybe two to three percent of that we do is also water line repair or water line replacements. So the service line going from the main
Tessa Murry (10:09.895)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (10:12.079)
into the house, we’ll repair those as well. They kind of fall in the same category.
Reuben Saltzman (10:16.043)
Okay, all right, got it.
Tessa Murry (10:17.457)
Do you actually replace sewer lines too, or is it just repairing them?
Noah Gavic (10:23.301)
you know, I’ll do everything under the sun pretty much. So, I mean, if there’s a way to do it, I’ve probably either done it or know how to do it or could figure out how to get it done, so.
Tessa Murry (10:26.02)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (10:32.199)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (10:34.701)
So how do you figure out which one you’re going to do, whether it’s going to be a repair or a replacement?
Noah Gavic (10:41.425)
Well, it gets tricky because at the end of the day, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. At the end of the day, you want to have a Swiss Army knife of different options for the homeowner or the consumer, wherever that is, if it’s a business or whatever, and make sure you pull out the right one for them. There might be five different ways to do the job, and this one makes the most sense out of all of them. There’s the basic…
Tessa Murry (11:05.735)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (11:09.147)
Simple ways you got would be, know, excavation is probably the most common one, just as far as everybody understands. Excavating, you’re gonna be digging down, trenching a new sewer service or trenching down to the old one, replacing the piping, relaying it by hand. That’s probably the most common known one. Then you would have lining, which is probably the more common now. That’s basically what you’re gonna be doing is putting a sleeve inside of the old sewer line. Some people like to do it to a tube.
But I like to almost consider it kind of like a stint makes it easier for people to understand More like it almost like an inside cast for your sewer line So kind of like somebody might have a cast if they have a break on their arm or it’s on the outside of their arm This is gonna be a new one that basically goes in soft and then hardens in place just like a cast wood on your arm and basically creates a new sewer service all the way out so there’d be digging lining Another one is called pipe bursting Basically, you still have to have two access points for that
Tessa Murry (11:51.335)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (11:56.743)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (12:07.073)
So typically if you’re going to replace or repair a full sewer line, you’re going to dig down at the city main in the middle of street. And you’re also going to dig inside the house at the front clean out or just outside the building at the footing, right? Where it leaves this, the outside of the dwelling. you would then go ahead and basically pull a cable through the, the pipe, a three quarter inch steel cable. And then on one end, you have a 30 ton, hydraulic Ram that’ll pull on that cable. And the other end, have a cylindrical
metal head looks kind of like a cone and then it’s got a little grabber on the back that grabs onto the piping and Basically, it’ll pull through the old piping Expanding it out of the way and it’ll pull the new pipe through So that’s another method especially like in areas where you can’t excavate say there’s like a front porch out there where Like Minneapolis is pretty common for that where they’ll actually have the house kind of ends and then they’ll have like a 10-foot porch coming out the front
Tessa Murry (12:51.685)
Whoa.
Noah Gavic (13:04.401)
and that foundation might only go down four feet deep. Well, how do you get to the sewer line if there’s nothing on either way? Well, you’re dig down inside and outside and you’re gonna trench across, or you’re gonna pipe burst it, or you would directionally drill it. And that’s kind of another option there. So directional drilling is basically where you push these rods in the ground. So the end of the rods have like a duck bill on the end of it, where it kind of goes like this. And what they do is they shoot them into the ground. So when they wanna go straight, they take that duck bill and they just keep spinning it.
Tessa Murry (13:04.654)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (13:14.183)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (13:33.743)
around in a circle and they have a slurry that goes out the front of that and basically creates a lubrication as it’s pushing through the ground. So if they want to pitch up, they’ll put that duck bill facing up and they’ll point up like this. If they want to go side, they’ll go over here. So they’ll just curve whatever way they need to and they have these 10 foot rods that they have enough where you can go at about 11 degrees per rod where you can change the direction. So they can shoot down and then come up exactly where they want. Also, they can do that for grade if they need to for a sewer line, they can shoot back and then keep it at like a
Tessa Murry (13:57.639)
you
Reuben Saltzman (13:57.901)
Mmm.
Noah Gavic (14:03.363)
one or 2 % grade and go nice and constant and then we can pull a pipe back that way. So in certain circumstances that may make the most sense. So like I said, there’s excavation, there’s lining, there’s pipe bursting. I just talked about directional drilling. And then on top of that, there’s other methods. you know, there’s a, call them SIPP, a spray in place pipe. So it’s like a coating system that uses either a polyurea based resin.
So polyurea, easiest way to explain what that is is, you know those spray-embed liners you see in your trucks? That’s made out of polyurea. It’s kind of more of a plastic, but a little bit softer. So they have those or epoxy-based coating systems. And that’s more common for doing inside of a building versus outside, just because when you’re lining a pipe, that liner material is gonna go through and it’s gonna block off any connections coming into that, any whys or any fittings coming in. Whereas a spray-in-place or
Tessa Murry (14:37.24)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (15:01.477)
brush in place system will just basically, it’s almost like painting on a pipe, if that makes sense. So there’s that method for inside if need be. And then, you know, there’s other methods we use like a hydraulic, so you think of it like a torpedo, but it uses air pressure to basically kind of plunk a hole through. So in certain areas where we just need to get from point A to point B.
Tessa Murry (15:07.399)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (15:30.001)
we might just go ahead and shoot ourselves a pilot hole and then slide the pipe back through. And that uses basically a pneumatic bore tool is what they call that. So there’s a variety of ways to go and tackle it. And sometimes you’ll use one, two or three different technologies or different ways to do it, depending on the process, what’s in the way, what’s the most economical, how much restoration is going to be needed after we’re done. know, okay, this is their…
Tessa Murry (15:35.782)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (15:39.891)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (15:47.175)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (15:55.985)
It goes underneath the pool. Okay, well how do we get underneath the pool without causing issues? Well, let’s drill it then or pipe burst it. So it really comes down to kind of what’s in the way and what’s the best solution for it.
Tessa Murry (16:02.311)
Bye.
Reuben Saltzman (16:06.809)
I’ve got so many questions. So all right, Tess, we’ll just have to take turns. right. All right, Tess, I’ll let you, okay. First off, does everybody have a Swiss Army knife that’s this big? I mean, it’s like, you have to have invested in a lot of different material, a lot of technologies, have learned how to use all these, have all of these different tools at your disposal.
Tessa Murry (16:07.589)
Wow. Me too.
Tessa Murry (16:13.799)
Let’s do it. Go ahead, you first.
Reuben Saltzman (16:36.491)
Is this common? mean, does every underground repair company have this big Swiss Army knife of tools that you guys do? Is this typical?
Noah Gavic (16:45.015)
No, no, I mean, the majority of the companies out there, they’re going to have excavation and they’re going to probably have lining. Those are the two things that are going to be options for them. Majority of the companies, they want to pick the easy jobs. They don’t want to do the hard jobs. They don’t want to take the ones that are a little bit more risky. So a lot of the stuff we do, it’s the riskier things like we’ll have companies, bigger name companies around town that still
Tessa Murry (16:52.549)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (16:55.179)
Okay.
Noah Gavic (17:13.199)
either refer us or subcontract us out for work because they don’t want to dig down 20 feet on the middle of Portland Avenue, which is a busy street and have to do detours or road construction. mean, we did a four sewer and waters for a tri, not triplex, it’d be a quadplex. Over in Hopkins, right off of Highway 7, I had to talk to, MnDOT. It took them three weeks to get approval to even shut down.
Tessa Murry (17:17.031)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (17:32.295)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (17:42.737)
that street coming in off of there and we had to it was it’s jumping through hoops. So long story short, I’ve done it enough times and dealt with all the different people and officials that I just know what’s going on. So we can quote those more accurately. Like they’re going to look at it and go, okay, this job here that I probably did for 40 grand, they’re going to be at 70 grand because they don’t know what they’re doing. So they build in the extra just to make sure they’re covering their butt. So
Tessa Murry (17:55.825)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (18:09.474)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (18:11.025)
You’re like the boutique of sewer repair companies, it sounds like. You get all the tough logistical nightmare, challenging jobs that no one else can handle or wants to take on.
Noah Gavic (18:22.703)
That’d be, I mean, obviously we like the nice easy ones too, but yeah, a lot of the stuff we do just because we’ve done it for so long, people will refer us. I mean, we got tons of realtors that work with us because they’ll call us and be like, hey, I got a customer here, their windows closing here on Sunday. One guy, he goes, I won’t use anybody else than you. He goes, you pulled over on a Friday when you’re heading up to the lake on Memorial weekend.
Tessa Murry (18:27.225)
You
Tessa Murry (18:32.602)
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (18:49.035)
and sent me off a quote right away because I needed to get it taken care of the next hour. And I mean, that’s just kind what we do at the end of the day, people have timelines and they’re gonna get stuff done. So you know, I’ll take a phone call on a Saturday, Sunday, say, Hey, yeah, this is what you got to do this, this and this. And a lot of times to we’ve been doing it so long that we know the areas we know roughly what the depths are, we can give you a rough estimate on where it’s at. So people, especially for transactions, they want to be able to close on it. So we’ll give Okay, here’s a price.
This price is good for X amount of feet, X amount of length. Provided these things here, no hard restoration, no grass restoration. If you want that as additional, I can price that per, and we’ll lay it out for them and just kind of explain like the pros and cons of what it looks like. And then they’re able to at least get back and negotiate. And then usually at that point, we’ll go out and do a site visit before we start the work and just clarify and make sure nothing’s odd that we don’t know. But usually anything that comes up.
We’ve already usually prepped the client on and said, okay, this could be underneath the driveway. It might cause asphalt repair. It could be X amount more. And so they’re usually aware of it. So our pricing overall, even when we give estimates where we haven’t been on site is usually pretty accurate just because we’ve, we’ve done the work for so long. know the areas and what’s there that we can kind of, where a lot of the other companies that go, we, we won’t give a quote unless we send somebody on site and it’s $300 to send a tech out there to scope the line, look at everything, get you a quote. And so.
Tessa Murry (20:08.039)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (20:14.309)
We’ve just kind of gotten this idea of, you know, people in this fast-paid world, they don’t want something that’s hard and that costs them a ton of money. At the end of the day, we’ll get you a price. Obviously, it’s provided there’s other caveats that are met, but we’re able to kind of get them at least going and get them figuring out what they need to do. So when we go out there to finally scope it and verify, you know, we’re already three quarters of the way done, then it’s just getting that job finalized and scheduled, so.
Reuben Saltzman (20:42.38)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:42.725)
Wow. Can you speak more to the pricing aspect? I’ve heard of the lining and I’ve heard obviously of the excavation process, but the pipe bursting and the other technologies you talked about, that’s new to me. Can you talk a little bit about kind of your pricing structure and how that works and average costs and everything?
Noah Gavic (21:02.993)
Yeah, so tricky part on it, mean, excavation that usually is kind of, I don’t want to give all my tricks away to everybody, but, but I mean, usually excavation, depending on where it’s at, you can be anywhere from 250 up to 450 a foot to, you know, to dig and repair that. Lining typically, something like that. You have some lowliers that are usually down like, I say, 100 bucks a foot.
Tessa Murry (21:12.219)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (21:13.431)
you
Tessa Murry (21:20.624)
Okay.
Noah Gavic (21:29.777)
And then you have people that are up to 200, 350, sorry, 250 to 300 bucks a foot. It really depends on who they are. And I’m not gonna say who they are, but usually the people that you see with that pricing structure are usually the people you see on TV, if that makes sense. They gotta pay for their overhead. And I don’t blame them for it, but at the end of the day, you as a consumer pay for their advertising. So as far as drilling goes,
Tessa Murry (21:30.234)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (21:35.056)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (21:46.415)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (21:57.751)
Usually something like that. That’s more of a specialty and like as you mentioned, kind of boutique. That’s more for areas where there is no sewer system in place where we, wouldn’t work, wouldn’t work to either rehab it with a liner or to pipe burst it because there’s nothing existing. We did one over on Cedar Lake Parkway the other day and the sewer line was shared with a neighbor. It actually, the two houses were built. One of them goes underneath the other one connects to the sewer and then that one goes out. They were ripping the structure down and
Tessa Murry (22:07.665)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (22:13.701)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (22:27.631)
they were going to have this guy disconnected and they were going to lower the basement down another, I think three, four feet. And so his sewer had been cut off. So we had to go and drill into the house, pull back piping, and then sit up far the other side and drill down, pull back, put a clean out access because every hundred feet you’re supposed to have a clean out access and shoot them a new sewer line without having to trench in an area that would have been like, I mean, it was skinny. There was no place to pile dirt, anything.
Tessa Murry (22:53.219)
Yeah. Wow.
Noah Gavic (22:55.779)
And I think I mean, I came in at 25 on that one 25,000. I think the nearest competitor was 40. So I mean, if that gives you an understanding, it’s just like I said, we’ve been doing it long enough that we know where numbers need to be at and where we’re at. And we’re not here to get rich. We’re here to make a good living on it. But at the end of the day, like I said, some of these other companies, they just they bit them high because it’s that hassle price, I don’t want to do it. And if they get it, they get it.
Reuben Saltzman (23:03.531)
Mmm. Wow.
Tessa Murry (23:03.671)
Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:23.942)
Yep.
Noah Gavic (23:25.541)
where we’re like, you know what, this is our everyday bread and butter, no big deal.
Tessa Murry (23:29.671)
So I don’t know if you can kind of generalize this enough, but if someone needed to replace a sewer line and it involved excavating, what’s an average ballpark cost, you think of that, for someone in the Twin Cities?
Noah Gavic (23:45.041)
My average, my average, go ahead.
Reuben Saltzman (23:45.23)
And let’s, and I want to say, let’s just say it’s a house in Minneapolis or St. Paul and it’s your cookie cutter neighborhoods. We’re not talking about some 600 foot house in Wayzata, 600 foot line. It’s from the house to the street.
Tessa Murry (23:46.031)
versus lining.
Noah Gavic (24:07.377)
Yep. So an average sewer line, would say the pretty close to average is about 65 feet long for most Minneapolis, St. Paul homes. So usually something like that, if we’re to line it, you’re probably looking at about eight, nine grand to line that roughly. And that we kind of price that in a certain way where we price it all a cart where we go, okay, here’s a price to line it from the house out to within the say 12 inches of the city main. And then if they want what we call last joint coverage or full coverage,
Tessa Murry (24:23.271)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (24:24.15)
Okay.
Noah Gavic (24:37.621)
And this kind of gets into that robot thing we’re talking about Reuben. So last strength coverage is basically means that there’s a connection right at the city main. most sewer lines have what they call a stub coming off the main. So think of it almost like a Y fitting, okay? So you have the normal sewer line running like this and then you have another branch sticking off. And so that branch that comes off, there’s gonna be a fitting where that sewer line connects to that branch line.
Reuben Saltzman (24:40.78)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (24:54.119)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (25:04.656)
And so at that fitting, that’s what we consider the last joint. That’s the last connection in the actual sewer line before it actually goes into the city main. So that Y fitting, what we do is we kind of charge a price for that as all a card item. say, you don’t want to cover that last joint to make sure you have no joints in your sewer line, because joints are where most of the problems happen on a sewer line. Specifically Minneapolis and St. Paul, most of their work is clay tile, and there’s every two feet you’re gonna have a joint.
Tessa Murry (25:26.471)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (25:32.869)
The reason why people have sewer issues is because they have leaking joints usually in the sewer pipe. So think of it this way, roots aren’t gonna grow into a sewer if they don’t know there’s water in it. And so the reason why a lot of people have issues is because your pipes are leaking. And so people go, well, isn’t that a maintenance thing? Should I just maintain it? And you’re like, well, I mean, you can maintain it, but at the end of the day, you’re kind of throwing money down the drain reality.
Tessa Murry (25:32.903)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:39.783)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (25:43.533)
It was nice.
Tessa Murry (25:48.785)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (25:59.919)
You’re gonna probably end up fixing it when you go to sell the house, right Ruben?
Reuben Saltzman (26:02.923)
No, absolutely. And I want you to talk about Golden Valley and a number of other cities I &I programs. We’ll get there.
Noah Gavic (26:08.465)
Sure. We’ll get there on that. So at the end of the day, with those older sewer lines especially, that’s where it’s always great to have StructureTech come out and give you a camera inspection. But even new stuff too. I mean, we come across plenty of work that’s, they call it thin wall PVC. And a lot of that stuff obviously where just, like the top’s broken, cracked. I’ve even seen just shoddy work where, I mean, the other day I came across one and it had been repaired.
and it looked like there was a square hole on the top of the PVC pipe. So looks like they chopped a hole on the top to jet the line to clear it. And then they just put like a Fernco, like a rubber boot over the top of it. And this was at the city main roughly that I came across as a move dug up other ones where there was a six pack of beer sitting on top of where we dug it up. I’m like, wait, it must be why it’s it’s failed. So I mean, it’s exactly so like I said, it
Tessa Murry (26:56.807)
Reuben Saltzman (26:59.725)
my.
Tessa Murry (27:02.033)
Buried the evidence.
Reuben Saltzman (27:03.467)
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (27:06.161)
Bad sewer work is no respecter of age. Age obviously stipulates that the older it gets, the higher chances of maintaining or repair or replacements necessary. But just because it’s not an older house doesn’t mean you might not have issues. mean, there’s plenty of houses that are PVC and Maple Grove. I got one in Valley, Maple Grove, I’m gonna be doing here soon. That just has one spot with ridden trusions. And they’re like, well, is that normal? I’m like, no, the pipe should be hermetically sealed, meaning that it shouldn’t have any water leaking out of the pipe. It should be able to hold an air pressure test.
Tessa Murry (27:15.569)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (27:19.271)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (27:36.175)
if roots are coming in, you have a defect in that line. So with that said, of the answer to your question is more so is, well, hang on, what was it again that you wanna say?
Tessa Murry (27:36.452)
You
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (27:46.671)
It was the pricing. So it was like eight to nine to kind of line a typical pipe and then for excavating, is it more expensive for that process?
Noah Gavic (27:55.035)
Yeah, so eight to nine would be to line it roughly on a 65 foot run. The thing that’s nice about lining this I can go from one access hole inside the building and shoot that liner. I don’t need to dig another hole on the street. The thing that starts to stipulate pricing more so is when you start to get to depths that are harder to dig to. So most of our excavation we usually cap it out at say 10 feet deep, a lot of other contractors will say seven, eight, nine feet. But
Tessa Murry (28:01.862)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (28:06.919)
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
Tessa Murry (28:16.228)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:23.546)
Okay.
Noah Gavic (28:24.653)
On average, a sewer leave in the building is gonna be anywhere from six feet to eight feet roughly. And then once it gets farther out into the streets, then you’re usually looking at somewhere at nine feet usually on the minimum side out to 35, 40 feet deep. mean.
Tessa Murry (28:39.335)
Whoa. Wow, really?
Noah Gavic (28:42.639)
Those are more of an oddity. Usually you’ll find sewer lines anywhere from nine to 15, but there are some really, really, really deep ones. And those are the tricky ones to do.
Tessa Murry (28:52.743)
Is that the geography, the topography and geography, if you’ve got a cliff or a hill or something like that, there’s a big drop.
Noah Gavic (29:00.239)
Yeah, well obviously sewer lines flow with gravity and so when you’re dealing with certain ones, if that house is already set down lower than the geographical area, it has to flow out and so if you’re down say in a low spot and you gotta get a sewer line to flow, well there’s only one of two ways. You either build the gravity system to go down deeper and go out and until it hits a lift station and then gets pumped back up in gravity.
Tessa Murry (29:25.328)
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (29:28.721)
So that’s how sewer works, basically. goes down gravity, hits a lift station, that lift station pumps it up, and then it goes down gravity. So you’re constantly just going up and down, up and down, up and down, until it gets all the way to the waste treatment plant. Otherwise, you have to do what’s called a force main or a lift station. And that basically is, as I talked about, where it usually goes out the back of the house, hits a holding tank. Once that holding tank gets to a certain level, then it runs it and pushes it through either like an inch and a quarter, an inch and a half.
Tessa Murry (29:28.795)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:37.307)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (29:56.945)
High-density polyethylene line all the way out. I mean we’ve done some where it was like 400 foot run on this house and there was no There was not very much pitch between point a and point B and so we had to do like I said this system that allowed it to basically churn up and Grind up all the solids and then just pump them out We did a job for st. Paul. That’s not sorry up at the st. Cloud hydraulic dam the electric dam up there they had
Reuben Saltzman (30:02.413)
Mmm.
Tessa Murry (30:10.023)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (30:17.531)
Bye.
Tessa Murry (30:25.543)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (30:27.385)
eight foot walls that we had to try to get through. And so we ended up doing a new system for them. They had a two inch pipe coming out and we had to basically sleeve an inch and a half pipe through that two inch pipe to get it out of the wall. And then we directionally drilled a new sewer line up to our other spot. And then we hooked it into this big 36 inch main interceptor and ran them out a new forest main line. Cause the original line was like 400 feet long and this one brought it down to like 125 feet.
But back to your original question, I’m sorry, I’m getting tangent here, but these are all the of the weird random projects we tackle that nobody else, like I said, nobody else wants to go take care of. They think I’m trying to do a hydroelectric dam. So anyways, long story short, digging gets a higher variable as far as what the cost is. Also too, the aspects that cause more cost for digging are gonna be your depth of where you’re digging.
Tessa Murry (31:00.87)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:05.083)
I can see why.
Reuben Saltzman (31:07.073)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:15.375)
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (31:24.025)
It’s gonna be your obstructions that are in the way. So other utilities, hard surface restoration, so concrete, asphalt, curb, gutter, other obstructions such as trees, streetlights, things like that. And so the other tricky part about excavation that’s gotten more expensive compared to lining is lining, you just need to whether the pipe’s intact and whether it’ll accept a liner and it’s pretty easy cut and dry. Excavation, you don’t know what you’re crossing until you’ve called in all the utilities to come out and mark what’s in the way.
Tessa Murry (31:31.237)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:45.615)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (31:52.271)
Mmm.
Noah Gavic (31:53.585)
you can pull a manhole cover and figure out what the main depth is by putting a tape measure down there and figure out what that is. But you don’t know all the details. so with that said, and there’s also plenty of abandoned facilities in there. So they may put a new gas main in, but they’re going to leave the old one in because it doesn’t make sense for him to rip the old one out. So you could have three, four, five different other utilities that are not marked in your way as you’re trying to excavate from the house out that you have to either call to get verified. So it slows you down. And then also to
Tessa Murry (31:58.659)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (32:02.577)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (32:12.037)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (32:23.717)
you could have tons of utilities all crisscrossing each other to the point where you can’t even really dig underneath it. And that’s where I’d directionally drill it. mean, literally, you could have something going this way, another thing going this way, another thing. I mean, it’s really common, specifically in like duplexes, to see a lot of utilities running right next to each other. So to give you an answer on something like that, as far as price goes, usually if you’re doing a full line all the way from the house out, you’re probably gonna look in less than 12 grand and it could be up to 20, 25.
Reuben Saltzman (32:29.417)
sure.
Tessa Murry (32:39.569)
Hmm. Hmm.
Tessa Murry (32:52.113)
for excavation, okay. But it seems like, it sounds like that’s kind of a dying art or technology. Like if you can line it, you’ll line it.
Noah Gavic (32:53.521)
for excavation.
Noah Gavic (33:01.969)
I would say the majority of the time, yeah, lining is going to be the simplest solution to take care of it. The reason why it’s the simplest is because you only need one access point. You don’t have to create another one outside. So no matter the depth of the sewer, could be 30 feet deep. You can line it from inside. Obviously you’re still taking a risk if your liner doesn’t go around and causes an issue, well then you got to potentially go to resort to other methods such as excavation or pipe bursting.
Tessa Murry (33:12.433)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (33:30.705)
But those are ones, obviously, if you look at it a little bit closer and go, okay, this is a really deep one here. Or we have a caveat that says, okay, we know this will go around, no problem. Or we can try this. I mean, we’ve done a couple times where it’s like the customer’s like, hey, I don’t really wanna spend the big amount. I’d rather try lining it. Can you try it? Well, we’ll try it, obviously, with the indication that here’s the price to dig it if we need to. And so we did one on Lake Street. Oh, it Lake and like Hennepin.
and we shot a liner and it didn’t growl as well as we wanted to. It hit a 90, so it was going out and then it hit a 90 degree bend where it drops down and it just blew that 90 degree bend out and we told them already on the front end, hey, it might not work. And it didn’t, so we had it ready to go for excavation the next day. But we were willing to try it for him and we just said, hey, this is what’s gonna happen. If it doesn’t, we gotta go this route. And we’ve had other success stories where it’s like, hey, we don’t know if it’ll work. We can try it and boom, it went around, saved the customer a ton of money.
Tessa Murry (34:16.539)
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (34:29.071)
And a lot of people, go right to, well, this needs to be dug up. This needs to be dug up now. And then the customer is in for anywhere from six to 10 grand, depending on where it is, just to do say like a spot repair and to fix the line. When in reality, we could have fixed the sewer line with a liner for that similar cost. And hey, they could have got a lot more done. everybody kind of goes to this idea of, well, your line’s blocked up, we need to dig it.
Tessa Murry (34:29.147)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (34:32.496)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (34:41.403)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (34:48.503)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (34:51.377)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (34:55.025)
when reality a lot of times it can be cleaned to the point where we can repair it then and then install a liner. And liners are typically considered a repair method versus replacement just because you’re not actually physically removing the pipe. You’re basically adding a new structure to the inside. So going back to the price for you, like I said, directional drilling, that I think I mentioned usually kind of 20, 25, usually on the minimum side. So do something like that depending on the length. If you’re looking at pipe bursting, that one,
Tessa Murry (35:06.917)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (35:11.751)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:17.895)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (35:23.515)
pipe bursting.
Noah Gavic (35:25.233)
It likes that one also varies too based on depth of the city main and what that looks like. But usually that’s going to be a little on the higher end too. So usually probably no less than 12, maybe up to 20, depending on where that’s at. And those are just kind of like said tools in the tool belt. would say majority of what we do is going to be excavation and lining. That’s probably the biggest one, but to have those other things in there are really nice to do in certain circumstances. So.
Tessa Murry (35:30.727)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (35:35.841)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:44.101)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (35:51.043)
Yeah, yeah, depending on the situation. what’s the average lifespan of a sewer line once you’ve lined it?
Reuben Saltzman (35:52.716)
Yeah.
Noah Gavic (35:59.022)
So.
It gets tricky and I said, yep, so we do.
Tessa Murry (36:02.631)
Or do you guys have a warranty? mean, once we put a liner in, it’s good for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.
Noah Gavic (36:07.569)
Yep. Yeah. So the industry warranty on almost all liners from all the different manufacturers is going to be a 10 year warranty on it. We provide a 25. So we cover the extra 15 years on there. Some people offer 50 some people offer a lifetime majority of those people that are offering those other warranties are also charging a lot more. They’re getting the same end product at the end of the day. And as you know, Ruben, I mean, how long does somebody actually live in a house for?
Tessa Murry (36:28.827)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (36:35.227)
Do they usually live in a house for longer than 25 years?
Reuben Saltzman (36:37.709)
I don’t know accurate this is today, but I mean, I’ve always heard the average is seven years.
Tessa Murry (36:46.417)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (36:46.619)
So at the end of the day, like I said, people are like, well, I want the longest warranty. And it’s like, well, are you really gonna use the longest warranty? Yeah, is it nice? But at end of the day, the products that we’re installing are gonna have a same average lifespan. So the minimum lifespan on a liner, depending on, I guess the product we use is Permaliner, but they say it’s a 50 year lifespan minimum on there, as long as it’s not exposed to UV light. So underground, it’s not exposed, because UV light can obviously break down material lot faster. You’ll see that on your cars.
Tessa Murry (37:09.383)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (37:13.253)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (37:14.565)
boats and whatever else, it just wrecks havoc on it. So being that it’s underground, not exposed to UV light, the service lifespan on a liner is supposed to be 100 year lifespan. So should out surpass anybody else as far as, I’m not gonna be installing them at that point anymore. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to function and work properly. that’s the other thing is to is making sure you have a quality installer to make sure that it is installed correctly so that it meets those lifespan numbers.
Reuben Saltzman (37:14.807)
Yep.
Tessa Murry (37:24.027)
Hmm
Tessa Murry (37:31.845)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:35.483)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (37:44.141)
Sure. Okay. And, and can you just talk a little bit about Golden Valley and a bunch of other cities, I &I programs, and what you’re doing to help with those cities? Because I gotta imagine you’re doing a lot of work in the cities that are requiring these.
Tessa Murry (37:45.435)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (37:58.917)
Yeah, so back when I was working for my dad’s company, we actually had the contract with MoundsVue to do all the I &I work out there. I’ve done it. Yep, so I &I stands for infiltration and inflow. Infiltration basically is where water leaks into the piping. Basically it’s clear groundwater that’s leaking into the piping. so that’s inflow. I &I, infiltration and inflow.
Reuben Saltzman (38:07.605)
and define I and I.
Tessa Murry (38:08.049)
Can you explain what I and, yeah, thanks.
Noah Gavic (38:28.241)
So, sorry, inflow is when you have like sump pumps or you have other drain tile lines that are draining into sewer line. So a lot of like Minneapolis, St. Paul areas, you’ll see when they televise a sewer line, you’ll see what’s called like a double Y. So it’s kind of a Y fitting where two lines converge and come into the main line. That was obviously outlawed when they started dividing the sewer systems up. They used to be where…
stormwater and sanitary were all put down the same sewer and then they started realizing that why are we processing all this extra water and so they started making it illegal then to add that extra rainwater coming off your roof and so that’s when gutters had to be put on and then pushed out to the outside and so those old rain gutters are still you know visible usually sticking up on the side of the house you can see them but a lot of times like Golden Valley some of those other cities I’ve seen some weird stuff where it’s like
Reuben Saltzman (38:58.893)
What was this?
Tessa Murry (38:58.95)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (39:23.269)
They have the drain tile that actually goes to like a hidden vault under the ground and it goes into a floor drain and that floor drain ties into the sewer system. And so they literally make you, they run water in every single fixture in the house and make you check them all to make sure that everyone has water running out of it. And if it doesn’t, they make you either find it or dig it up or line past it so that it seals it up because they don’t want that extra groundwater coming in. The reason why that is particular, so,
Tessa Murry (39:32.251)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (39:49.211)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (39:52.305)
Metconsole, they’re the ones that handle the waste treatment plants. So let’s say they can handle a set amount, you know, three billion gallons a year or whatever. During the spring, dawn, the summer rains, they have a lot more infiltration and inflow because of people discharging their sump pumps. People go ahead and leaking water coming in from the joints in their old clay tile or any asbestos or any of the old piping in there. And so,
80 % of the actual infrastructure is going to be private and only 20 % is going to be the actual city mains. And so the reason why this is such a big deal is because the cities get fined from Met Council based on the amount of overages they have. So they have flow meters that are basically on their main lines as they go out. So each city as they have water evacuated or leaving their sewer systems and going to a Met Council main, they have these flow meters that will check flow.
And so they bill each homeowner, so each city will bill you on your sewer usage based on what your winter rates or winter usage for water is. Because they’re figuring in the summer that you’re actually gonna be sprinkling your lawn, and so they can’t bill you based on that. They have to bill you on an average of what your winter usage is. And so each city has what they expect to say, okay, we say we’re gonna do 35 million gallons of water in this specific time.
Tessa Murry (41:05.53)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (41:17.271)
Mount Council goes, okay, well, no, you didn’t have 35. You actually had 60. And so you got to pay us for the extra water that we’re not processing that you’re not accounting for. And so each city basically will get fined based on the amount of excess water that they have to get processed. And so what they can do is Met Council said, okay, here’s two options. We can do the fine you and you can pay the fine, or you can take that exact same amount of money and put it back into your infrastructure and repair.
Tessa Murry (41:29.743)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (41:36.038)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (41:46.767)
the infrastructure. So the majority of the cities, what they’ll do is they’ll start working on their own infrastructure. They’ll line their own piping, replacing, repairing it and going through and basically continually reinforcing all those pipes so that they don’t leak. So they can cut down on the amount of I and I or inflow infiltration. But like I mentioned, there’s only 20 % of that actually is going to be coming from those city mains. 80 % of it’s going to be coming from the private infrastructure. So
Tessa Murry (42:00.913)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (42:14.673)
The thing with the cities in creating these programs, it all kind of stemmed from Met Council is by doing this now, they’re basically requiring homeowners when they do a point of sale. So Golden Valley and West St. Paul are probably the two oldest ones that have done it for a long time, where when you do a point of sale, so if your house goes up for sale and you want to sell it, you got to go to the city, you do what’s called an I &I inspection. They send one of their inspectors up from the city, he scopes a line.
He sees if there’s any spot where there’s root intrusions, mineral deposits, active water coming into the line, or if there’s any connections coming in that can’t be verified, meaning water’s not flowing through them. Those have to be either verified, meaning we gotta dig it up and find that spot, or line over and cover it to make sure that it’s not a connection that can allow water to inflow into the system. So we’ve worked in Golden Valley and West St. Paul for so long, and then obviously Mount Zu, Eagan, there’s I think
Tessa Murry (42:55.419)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (43:05.284)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (43:12.497)
14 or 15 different cities now that have adopted that philosophy. And it all kind of stemmed from the same model that Golden Valley started where it’s easy enough to do at a point of sale. So point of sale basically indicates when that property goes to sell, some cities require it to be done within 30 days, some it has to be done at the time before the sale. Other ones, they make you put the money in escrow. So that way they know the money’s there to have it taken care of and it has to be completed within 60 to 120 days.
Tessa Murry (43:15.771)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (43:41.809)
to make sure it’s done and the reason also too that they do it at that time of sale is usually when you have money changing hands, it’s easier to pay for an expense like this and so that’s they’ve just found to be a simpler method to do it at that point and then usually like mounds view and I think few others so then they do what they call your certificate of compliance where you’re in compliance for up to 10 years where you don’t have to have another inspection done within that 10 year period.
Reuben Saltzman (43:51.565)
Sure.
Tessa Murry (43:55.815)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (44:10.223)
And then after that tenure period, you still have to have it scoped again. That doesn’t mean you have to have a fix as long as it’s done correctly and not leaking. Then you would just continue to be in compliance and they would just let you sell the home again. So that’s kind of what the I and I stands for is infiltration and inflow. And it’s stemmed mostly, like I said, from Golden Valley’s model. But like I said, I’ve done tons in West St. Paul, Golden Valley, Mounds View. More more cities are adopting it every day. And so when customers go, well, why should I do this? I’m like, well, you’re going to eventually need to do it eventually. So.
Tessa Murry (44:22.727)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (44:40.144)
Mm-hmm.
Noah Gavic (44:40.249)
You can do it now and reap the benefits of it or you can wait until you go and sell the property and then pay for it and you could try that way. Exactly. So.
Tessa Murry (44:44.517)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (44:45.941)
and give somebody else a brand new sewer. Yeah. Okay.
Tessa Murry (44:48.727)
Yeah, wow. that’s the cost of the homeowner then. are the one that has to, whoever’s selling it or buying it, it, I mean, is it usually the buyer who pays for that or the seller who pays for these repairs?
Noah Gavic (45:00.273)
Well, obviously that can be negotiated at the end, but majority of the time it’s going to be the seller’s responsibility to take care of that. And I would say, and we’ll say 90, 95 % of the cities, the responsibility of the sewer line relies on the homeowner from the house all the way to the connection that the city made. There’s a couple cities, think Maple Grove, Shoreview, and then Brooklyn.
forgive us Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, one of those. They hold the responsibility in the right of way. But the rest of them, it’s you own the sewer all the way out. Every time I talk to a home where they go, what? Well, that’s under the road. That’s the city’s responsibility. I’m like, you can call them, you can argue all you want. I’ll tell everybody else and then once you get done arguing with them, give me a call back.
Tessa Murry (45:37.351)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (45:44.143)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (45:49.901)
Yeah, yeah, don’t argue with me about it. I don’t make the rules
Tessa Murry (45:54.069)
man.
Noah Gavic (45:54.127)
I’m like, yeah, I don’t make the rules. I’m just telling you what they’re gonna tell you, so.
Reuben Saltzman (45:57.806)
Yeah. All right. Well, no, gosh, I don’t know where time goes. We’re almost out of time, but two things. Number one, I teased it. I want you to talk about your robot because, Tessa hasn’t heard this story, but he saved our butts one time. We were doing a sewer inspection and I don’t even remember the details of what happened, but we were able to call up Noah’s company, Brothers Underground, and they were able to get out there like,
Tessa Murry (45:58.616)
My goodness.
Tessa Murry (46:13.094)
Mm-mm.
Tessa Murry (46:17.19)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (46:26.507)
I think while we were still on site, they came out and saved our butts. Tell that story and what this awesome robot is. What did you guys do?
Noah Gavic (46:34.417)
Yeah, well, so that story is actually a pneumatic grabber we have where it’s basically got claws. So think of like a claw machine, like a candy crane. It’s kind of like that, but it’ll pull with, it’ll grab with 80 pounds of pressure, pounds of force. So we stuck that down there. can’t remember which inspector you had out there, but it was one of those caps that if you unscrew it just a little too far, the back will fall off and it went down and around the corner. And I was like, uh-huh.
Tessa Murry (46:34.535)
you
Tessa Murry (46:44.198)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (46:50.247)
Wow.
Noah Gavic (47:03.153)
They’re notorious for doing this, so it’s not the inspector’s fault. He tried to get it out nice and gently, and it just wasn’t coming, and then he had to do a little more, and then it just fell off. So it was one of those tricky ones. So anyways, we subbed this pneumatic grabber down with a camera, and we were able to get it in place, and basically go ahead and get the claws on there, and had the camera right next to it, we looking at it, and just grab it, and then kinda twist it, and pull it right out. But that would’ve resulted in typically breaking up on the floor in a fully finished basement.
Tessa Murry (47:26.023)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (47:31.366)
No way.
Noah Gavic (47:31.863)
it would have probably cost a considerable amount of money to try to pull that back out. So that’s the benefit of that. But our pneumatic, so our robots, basically it’s almost like a big camera reel. And the end of it, basically, it’s got a couple inflatable bags that will allow you to inflate and kind of keep your robot in position while you’re cutting. And the end of it, basically, it’s got, is what comes off like this, and you have like a cutting hand in the end, and it can rotate.
Reuben Saltzman (47:36.075)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (47:37.404)
That’s crazy. Yeah. Wow.
Noah Gavic (47:59.631)
like this back and forth so we can go in and cut and it’s got a camera that basically points. And so we can see exactly what we’re cutting and we hook it up to air and it’s basically got an air motor that’ll just go eee and we just grind away at whatever extra liner material. I mean we’ve had times where we’ve had to go in there and cut some pipe out of the way or we have a cable that goes out of the pipe. Instead of having to dig it up, we’ll go in there and cut the cable off, retrieve the cable, pull it back and then line the pipe instead.
Tessa Murry (48:07.719)
Surgical.
Noah Gavic (48:27.289)
where everybody else is like, nope, gotta do this, you gotta do that. And so that allowed us to do a lot more. It’s kind of just one of those Swiss Army Knife tools.
Reuben Saltzman (48:33.003)
Yeah, this is… this is latheroscopic surgery for drains. sorry.
Tessa Murry (48:34.902)
This just, yeah, I was just gonna say that. This reminds me of how technology’s advanced like in the medical industry for human bodies, stints in a heart or if someone had a heart attack before they used to have to cut the chest open, open it up, and it was big surgery nowadays and you just go in through a vein in the leg and, you know, do all this work. And that’s, it sounds like that’s how kind of sewer repairs have evolved.
Noah Gavic (48:59.067)
Well, I was gonna be a brain surgeon, then it turned out to be drain surgery pays more, so.
Reuben Saltzman (49:02.069)
I love it. I love it.
Tessa Murry (49:07.853)
Gosh, I, you know, I know we need to wrap this up, but Ruben, have one. I just want to hear one story from Noah. Can you tell us one really good story of like either fascinating or crazy, you know, job that you did that you just couldn’t believe one of your favorite stories to tell?
Reuben Saltzman (49:09.357)
All right.
Noah Gavic (49:25.073)
that’s a lot. What are the most interesting ones probably I came across in recent years. So we did it actually this last year. It was a church down right off of like Cedar Lake Parkway and no Cedar Avenue. Anyways, long story short, this big, huge old church and I was Cameron sewer line because they had a blockage and they created it and the sewer went out underneath these big old steps.
Tessa Murry (49:29.115)
Ha ha ha.
Noah Gavic (49:54.641)
and there was really no way to go ahead and repair it. So this is one of those ones where you had to directional drill it. But I’m looking at this job going, okay, how can we do this? I’m like, this massive structure, I’m like, normally houses, you know what the footing depth is. So we had to dig outside, dig down, figure out where the footing was, going out of this big structure, because I mean, it’s a huge, like massive church. so long story short, when I cameraed it, I’m looking at it, I’m going, okay,
Tessa Murry (50:00.263)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (50:18.087)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (50:24.293)
This is supposed to tap a 12 inch clay main. I’m looking at it and this isn’t clay pile pipe here at the main. This is concrete pipe. So I call the city, I’m sitting over the plats, I’m looking at it, I’m going, okay, I think that the sanitary sewer line is tied in with the storm water. So literally they’re putting raw sewage down the storm line, which just gets washed out to the watersheds.
Tessa Murry (50:44.103)
Reuben Saltzman (50:48.853)
my, for a gigantic church.
Tessa Murry (50:48.999)
no-
Noah Gavic (50:52.193)
For this big church, it’s a big old church. Now they had three sewer systems, so not all of it was going out to that. Two of the other ones were going out to the right spots, but this one line was one the oldest ones and it was going out to there. So we had to redirect, shoot a new sewer line underneath and drill it all the way across underneath the 36 inch water main, cruise across, tap into the new sewer line, which the 12 inch main was sitting on top of the other one.
Tessa Murry (50:53.415)
my.
Noah Gavic (51:19.755)
They were sitting right on top of each other and so we had to shoot into line with barely minimal pitch we could shoot. It was like threading a needle through there and then we had to go in. had to do a man entry, walk down into the storm sewer and cap off the old line.
Tessa Murry (51:20.187)
Mwah.
Tessa Murry (51:25.517)
my gosh. Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (51:33.889)
Wow, that’s wild.
Tessa Murry (51:34.879)
You know, is that, do you come across that often? Is that how the sewer system was originally built like 100 years ago, 200 years ago?
Noah Gavic (51:44.815)
Well, like I said, a lot of them were built together. I mean, we could do a whole other thing on sewer systems like St. Paul. Theirs is all sand rock. So they have tunnels that are underground and those are all basically chipped away by miners. They go in there and you can see spots where they’ve mined it away. And a lot of those holes, they don’t even have sewer pipe. They literally just go down through what they call a drill hole where they literally just drill the hole and the pipe is the rock.
Tessa Murry (52:10.611)
my goodness, I think I’ve actually seen one of those on a house on like West 7th on the cliff where the sewer line just dropped directly down underneath this house into the rocks.
Noah Gavic (52:16.923)
Yup.
Noah Gavic (52:21.937)
Correct, yeah, so you’ll see those and that’s another, those are usually the ones that are the 40 to 60 feet deep long, so.
Tessa Murry (52:23.761)
crazy.
Tessa Murry (52:28.965)
Wow. Okay, we need to have you back on the show for a part two. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (52:30.165)
Yeah, pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, we got to chat about some of that. Well, last thing, Noah, anything that we didn’t talk about that I should ask you about any points you meant to bring up that we didn’t cover?
Noah Gavic (52:44.181)
like I said, there’s just, there’s a variety of ways to look at it. And so, I mean, when realtors call us or other people call us, we’ll sit there and we’ll have a conversation with you. If you’re to buy, you’re not going to buy. We’ll still take care of you. a lot of times I might not get a realtor to say, Hey, I want to, I want to move forward this time. But they go, you know what? You’re my guy. You’re my guy. I want to call you because you guys answered my phone calls on a weekend, on a holiday. You took our, you took the time to walk me through it. might not be the sale, but
That’s kind of where we get our bread and butter is we’ve just worked with so many people and we’ve taken care of them on that. with that said, there’s so many ways to skin a cat. So if somebody tells you, Hey, this has to be dug up. There’s plenty of alternatives. I mean, we’ve come in on a lot of these ones where it’s like, we’ll go in there, we’ll jet the sewer line out and clear it out and get the blockage out and line it. And we usually still come in less than somebody that was just going to excavate one spot. Um, and that’s where like some people use, they go, you’re my lifesaver. It’s like,
Tessa Murry (53:34.875)
Well.
Tessa Murry (53:39.398)
Hmm.
Noah Gavic (53:39.855)
Wish I would have known about you guys before.
Reuben Saltzman (53:41.707)
Yeah, yeah. And if people.
Tessa Murry (53:42.693)
Wow. This was very, very informative. Thank you so much, Noah, for coming on our show. Yeah, I’ve learned a lot from you.
Reuben Saltzman (53:47.467)
Yeah, yeah, really good. And how do people reach you if they want to get a hold of you? No one
Noah Gavic (53:49.083)
Yeah. Well, we could.
Yeah, so you can go to our website. That’s probably the simplest way if you have a sewer need specifically. We have a contact sheet on there where you can submit for a quote. And so if you already have a video of the line, say from StructureTech or another home inspector, you can submit that on there. We’ll go ahead and review that. And we usually get back to you. It’s usually within, we’ll say 24 to 48 hours. If we’re really busy during the summertime, it might take a little longer. By that point, just give us a phone call. Our number’s on our website as well. That’d probably be the easiest. So our website is gonna be
brosunderground.com, so B-R-O-S, but if you search brothers underground, it’ll still make us to the same spot, so.
Reuben Saltzman (54:33.421)
Cool. All right. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on the show. And yeah, we’ll have to do a follow up, hear more stories, talk about other stuff. But.
Tessa Murry (54:38.523)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (54:41.863)
Hahaha
Noah Gavic (54:42.687)
there’s plenty of technologies I didn’t even talk about as far as the difference in lighting and all that. I could get into the weeds with you on that.
Tessa Murry (54:45.697)
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (54:49.134)
Well then we’ll have to do it soon so we remember. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Noah, for the listeners. If you’ve got questions or things that you want to hear Noah talk about the next time we have him on, shoot us your questions. read all the emails. You can email us at podcast at structuretech.com and we will catch you next time. Thank you so much.
Tessa Murry (54:49.425)
Yeah.
Exactly.
Tessa Murry (55:03.832)
Mm-hmm