← Sewer line replacement bid calculator
A published $125-a-foot special treats 40 feet under a lawn as the same job as 80 feet under a driveway with two laterals and a 6-foot bury. It is not. Hydro-jet calculators price cleaning an existing line. Septic calculators price a tank lid and extra gallons. Replacing the pipe is a method, a surface, and the laterals you have to reconnect. Quoting all of that from a per-foot special is how the first sawcut eats the field margin.
Each extra foot of hard surface is time that never appears on the brochure. On the sample rates a 40-foot open-cut under lawn with one cleanout prices about $3,407 ($85 per foot, 13.3 crew-hours, walk-away $2,385). The same shop’s 80-foot open-cut under a driveway with two laterals prices about $10,368 ($130 per foot, 40.8 hours). Half of that driveway bid is restoration — labor, asphalt patch, and the dump ticket. Matching the yard job’s $85-a-foot special on the driveway run is how that job becomes a loss.
Pipe bursting restores pits, not the whole slab. On the same 80-foot driveway run the sample rates price bursting at about $5,697 — $4,671 less than open-cut. CIPP lining the same run prices about $8,593. Open-cut is still competitive on short lawn work: lining that 40-foot yard job prices about $4,659 because the wet-out liner is not free. Treating every run as one per-foot number is how the method that looked cheapest on paper is not the one that keeps the margin.
A 120-foot 6-inch CIPP liner with three laterals and an occupied-house bypass is not the 80-foot driveway burst plus 50%. On the sample rates that liner prices about $17,302 ($144 per foot, 15.1 crew-hours). Restoration is zero; the laterals and the liner footage are the bid. A 60-foot pipe-burst under sidewalk with two pits prices about $5,518 ($92 per foot). Neither number lives in a $125-a-foot special.
A $42/h tech loaded at 35% payroll burden is $56.70. Margin is a share of the price you send, not a markup on cost. The walk-away price is total cost — below that the job makes nothing before you take a dollar home. Replace every rate with your invoices before you send either number.
This is arithmetic on the rates you type. It is not a plumbing specification, a code determination, a permit, an engineering stamp, or a recommendation of open-cut versus trenchless. Depth, soil, laterals, and what the jurisdiction will accept still decide the method. Verify every figure against your own takeoff.
No warranty. This free page is not plumbing, construction, legal, tax, or financial advice. You are responsible for reviewing and verifying its output before relying on it. It is hosted best-effort with no SLA: it may be slow, broken, moved, or taken offline without notice. Open the bid calculator to price a specific run.
Charge from the method (open-cut, pipe bursting, or CIPP lining), the run footage, bury depth, laterals, cleanouts, the surface you have to put back, loaded labor, overhead, and a margin that is a share of price. A default 40-foot open-cut under lawn at the sample rates in this calculator prices around $3,407 — about $85 per foot.
When the run sits under a driveway, sidewalk, or street. On the sample rates an 80-foot open-cut under a driveway with two laterals prices around $10,368, half of that in restoration. Pipe bursting the same run prices around $5,697. The per-foot special never sees the sawcut.
A liner is not a burst and a burst is not an open-cut. On the sample rates a 120-foot 6-inch CIPP job with three laterals and an occupied-house bypass prices around $17,302 ($144 per foot, 15.1 crew-hours). Laterals are the expensive part of lining; restoration is usually zero.