Sterling Park, south of Route 7, is where Loudoun Water’s oldest pipe is buried. Its capital plan, which runs through 2035, names Sterling Park Section 1 the oldest section of pipe in its system, laid before it had formal design standards, and lists about 450 sewer laterals to replace there along with five miles of cast iron water main. On West Beech Road and the streets off it, where the main went in during the 1960s, about 51 more are on the list.
Part of Sterling Park drains to the Cabin Branch sewershed, and there the plan puts a liner in every lateral, about 575 of them, citing consistent breaks and after-hours calls, and rain getting into the sewer in storms. How far up each lateral the liner reaches is still being settled. Either way, Loudoun Water’s rules leave the building sewer to the owner and keep only the stretch in the public right of way for the utility.
In the part of Sterling the Census calls Sterling, about four homes in ten went up before 1980, and the typical owner’s house dates from 1979. A 1960s lateral is usually cast iron or clay, and some from that decade are Orangeburg, layers of wood fiber and pitch that soften and squash out of round under the soil. The camera settles which one yours is before any cutter goes in.
North of Route 7, Countryside, Cascades and Lowes Island went up mostly in the 1980s and 90s, usually on plastic pipe. It won’t rust, but a trench dug thirty years ago can settle and leave a dip that collects paper. Loudoun Water’s plan lines about 180 laterals and their mains across two sewersheds, one it calls Countryside 2, to keep groundwater out. Around Dulles Town Center, where seven homes in ten are rented, the camera is usually the landlord’s or the association’s call.