Pipes and pipe fittings are components of a public or private sewer infrastructure.  Working on this infrastructure is expensive and laborious.

The quality and life span of the pipe material is in the end the most definitive factor for the ultimate service life of the sewer infrastructure and also of the overlying infrastructures. Yet the cost of the pipe material is a very small proportion of the total cost of the project.  Depending on the location of the sewer, whether it is in urban centres or in more rural areas, the cost component of the pipe material varies from 0.1 to 5%.

Other possible costs are:

- design, tendering and contract awarding procedures;
- site preparation, road signs, demolition work, earth removal;
- breaking open and repair of the road infrastructure or laying a completely new road including
  road furniture, lighting, signposts, plants, …
- excavation of the trench, earth removal, well-point drainage, shuttering, foundation and
  enclosing of the pipe material;
- new manholes and inspection chambers.
- replacement of gullies, accessories of networks of  affected rain water systems. 
- social and economic costs that accompany the execution of such work.

If the cost component of the sewer materials is already very small, then the price differences between sewer materials as such are therefore in actual fact negligible.

If the cost component of different sewer materials is compared in detail, the choice of vitrified clay represents an unambiguous cost saving when the costs of maintenance, the longer life span and the thereby associated advantages in terms of financing and refinancing, and the environmental issues are taken into account.