Ashburn’s sewer lines are young. About seven in ten Ashburn homes, Brambleton and Broadlands included, went up since 2000. Orangeburg, clay and cast iron belong mostly to houses built before 1980, and only about two Ashburn homes in a hundred are that old. A line here is nearly always plastic, so the camera judges how it was laid: the slope, the joints, and whether the trench beneath it has sunk.
The older half is Ashburn proper, around Ashburn Farm and Ashburn Village, where the typical owner home dates from 1998. A lateral that age has had a quarter century for its backfill to settle and the yard trees to spread. Plastic mostly keeps roots out until a joint shifts, and once one does, a root will find it. A line there that backs up every couple of years has a cause the camera can put a name and a distance to.
Brambleton’s typical owner home is from 2011, Loudoun Valley Estates’ from 2013, Moorefield’s and One Loudoun’s from 2015, and few of those lines have ever had anyone look inside. At that age the pipe is seldom the first suspect in a backup. Loudoun Water’s list of what to keep out of your drains starts with wipes, flushable ones included, then grease, which it says a garbage disposal won’t keep off the pipe to the street.
Where the trouble sits decides who pays. Loudoun Water makes the building sewer yours but keeps sole control of the stretch in the public right of way, which Ashburn Village’s guidelines put at the street plus about ten feet past the curb. If a plumber finds a defect out there, Loudoun Water wants photos or video showing exactly where, with measurements, sent to you and to Loudoun Water, then repairs its part at no extra cost to you. Here the camera is also the paperwork.