Sewer Line Replacement Cost: $4,690–$9,814

What drives the price

Two houses on the same street can get very different quotes for the same problem.

Angi also notes most sewer projects start with a video inspection, which it prices at $100 to $500 nationally. Ours is where the quote comes from, so you're paying for information you'd need anyway.

Arizona factors

Caliche is the one people haven't heard of until the excavator hits it. The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension describes it as a soil layer where the particles are cemented together by calcium carbonate, ranging from loose lumps to "highly consolidated, solid rocklike conglomerations." It can be a few inches thick or several feet. A trench that would take a morning in soft dirt can take two days through a caliche shelf, and that's labor and machine time on your invoice. It's also the reason an honest dig quote is a range, and why we'd rather camera and locate first than guess.

Monsoon season runs June 15 through September 30 by the National Weather Service's calendar. When a storm dumps an inch of rain in an hour, a sewer line that's been marginal all year is the one that backs up. If your drains have been slow since spring, get the camera in before August.

Age matters here in a specific way. Census figures put the median Mesa home around 1989, Chandler around 1998, and Gilbert around 2004. Older Mesa homes often have cast iron drain lines, and cast iron roughens and scales as it ages. The newer Gilbert and Chandler stock is mostly PVC, which fails at joints and bellies rather than by rusting out. Same symptom, different fix.

What Yellowstone charges

From Yellowstone's paid invoices for the 12 months ending September 3, 2026:

The sewer range is the 25th to 75th percentile of the full paid ticket, with a $6,894 median. Fourteen jobs is useful local evidence, but still a thin sample; it combines different lengths, depths, methods, and restoration requirements. Your camera inspection and written scope set your actual price.

If another company has already told you the line needs replacing, we'll put our own camera in and show you what we see at no charge. That's a standing offer, not a promotion. Sometimes the answer is a spot repair. Sometimes it's a cleaning. Sometimes they were right.

Repair or replace?

A spot repair makes sense when the camera shows one problem in an otherwise sound line: a single cracked section, a root intrusion at one joint, an offset where two pipes meet. Replace the whole line when the camera shows the same failure every few feet, when cast iron has lost its bottom, or when you've paid to clear it three times in two years. The third clearing usually costs more than admitting the pipe is done.