To say Marco Acosta likes his LightRay LR3 pipeline spot-repair system doesn’t fully capture his enthusiasm. 

“Customers just love that machine,” he says. “They drool all over it. It has worked wonders for me. It is an amazing machine.”

The co-owner of Handy Plumbing Man in San Carlos, California, bought the UV curing machine in early January. It paid for itself within a month, Acosta says. That’s saying something because it is a $38,000 tool. The LightRay LR3 is a collaboration between Spartan Tool and Waterline Renewal Technologies.

Handy Plumbing Man was founded in 2019 but has grown quickly. The company now numbers 38 employees and 22 service vehicles, providing residential and commercial plumbing services and sewer cleaning, inspection and repair work to the San Francisco Bay Area.

SIMPLE YET VERSATILE

The LightRay LR3 is versatile, Acosta says. It can patch lines from 3 to 12 inches in diameter and the cold packer can either be pulled or pushed into place. Furthermore, the high-performance fiberglass liner itself comes already impregnated with non-VOC resin. Refrigeration isn’t necessary and the liners have a six-month shelf life when stored in a controlled environment between 50 and 70 degrees. Once positioned, the patch cures in as few as 10 minutes. Liners come in 5-, 10- and 20-foot lengths.

A couple communities in Acosta’s service area have marshy soils where water awaits only 3 feet underground. The condition precludes some traditional pipe repair methods and also invites inflow and infiltration. Yet all that water is not a daunting prospect, Acosta says, because the LightRay LR3’s LED UV system “can cure even if submerged in water.”

Operating the system is a two-person job, but that doesn’t mean a person must be a specialist of some kind to use it. It is extremely operator-friendly, Acosta says, noting that he’s confident he could take anyone completely unskilled in the trades and teach them to operate the LightRay LR3 in a single workday.

“It’s pretty simple,” Acosta says. “With the simplicity of the tool and how easy it is to connect and operate, I give an A-plus to the designer.”

AN EVERYDAY TOOL

Some of the spot repairs Acosta is now making with the LightRay LR3 he formerly would have handled with a traditional CIPP system, or resorted to pipe bursting or digging up the line to replace the failed section.

His crews use the LightRay LR3 almost every workday because it is “adaptable to different situations,” Acosta says. “You can adapt it to pretty much anything. At a house on a slab, for example, or a house where you don’t want to cut into the flooring.”

Acosta says he checked out other spot-repair systems with similar features, but the LightRay LR3 stuck out to him as the superior option. His technicians concur.

“They are always fighting over who gets to use it,” Acosta says. “We had a meeting recently and talked about it. I told them we don’t want the fighting, so I am buying a second LightRay LR3.”

“The fact is, the LR3 has been really good to us. Using it, we rarely have to do any digging. It can go down a toilet. It has worked wonders. It’s an amazing thing. Getting a second one is a no-brainer.”

GLOWING ENDORSEMENT

Acosta says he will talk to anyone considering getting a LightRay LR3 and wanting an opinion.

“It will save a drain cleaner or plumber a lot of money,” he says. “The investment is totally worth it. I would recommend it to any contractor.”