From Mainstreet to the Suburbs: The Sewer Lines Under Hopkins
Hopkins has some of the oldest housing, and some of the oldest sewer lines, in the entire west metro, alongside newer postwar neighborhoods with much...
Hopkins has some of the oldest housing, and some of the oldest sewer lines, in the entire west metro, alongside newer postwar neighborhoods with much younger pipe. The age of your Hopkins home, and how close it sits to the old Mainstreet core, tells you a great deal about what is running underneath it.
A factory town, and the housing that came with it
Hopkins did not begin as a bedroom suburb. It began as a factory town. The Minneapolis Threshing Machine Company, later called Minneapolis Moline, opened here in 1887 and became the largest employer in western Hennepin County. That same year, the West Minneapolis Land Company was founded specifically to build housing for the factory workers. The settlement incorporated as the Village of West Minneapolis in 1893 and was subsequently renamed Hopkins in 1928.
That history left Hopkins with a genuinely old core. The worker housing near Mainstreet, the old Excelsior Avenue, dates to the 1890s through the 1920s, which makes those sewer laterals some of the oldest we encounter anywhere in the west metro. Some of them are more than one hundred years old.
The postwar neighborhoods
After the war, Hopkins grew like everyone else. It incorporated as a city in 1947. Its municipal sewer was tied into the Minneapolis system around 1950, and new neighborhoods filled in through the postwar years. Those homes have younger service lines, from the late 1940s and 1950s, which puts them in the era where clay was giving way to Orangeburg, the bituminized fiber pipe that does not age well. Interlachen Park, the Edina adjacent Hopkins enclave, is a quieter pocket of 1920s and 1930s homes with older clay lines.
What the age means for your line
Near Mainstreet, you are most likely looking at very old clay, laid in short sections with mortar joints that a century of Minnesota freeze and thaw has almost certainly pulled apart, which is an open door to roots. In the postwar neighborhoods, you may have clay or you may have Orangeburg, and an Orangeburg line from around 1950 is well past its intended fifty-year life. In both cases, the year your home was built points you toward the likely material, but only a camera confirms the material and the condition.
What to do if you own a home in Hopkins
If your home is in the old Mainstreet core, assume the line is very old clay and get a camera inspection so you know whether it is holding up or separating at the joints. If your home is postwar, find out whether you have Orangeburg reaching the end of its life. Either way, knowing now is far cheaper than reacting to a backup.
At Lucky Dog Sewer & Drain we clean and camera every main line, quote a flat rate before we start, and because we do drain and sewer work only and no repairs, we have no reason to find a problem that is not there. If the footage shows a line that needs more than a cleaning, we show you the same screen and point you to an honest fix.
Own a home in Hopkins? Contact Lucky Dog Sewer & Drain for a camera inspection and a straight answer about what is under your yard.
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