Christchurch City Council says the brick barrel pipe underneath the Barrie St intersection dates back to 1910 and has reached the end of its useful life so needs to be replaced with a new main.
"The work will be carried out over the next two to three months and will be done in stages to reduce the disruption to traffic," said council stormwater and waterways programme manager Keith Davison
"While the work is carried out, we will be maintaining two lanes of traffic in each direction on Brougham Street during the day.
"When it comes to installing the pipe across the road, crews will be working at night because we will need to one lane traffic on Brougham Street.
"It is not possible to do that during the day because of the high volume of traffic that uses the road.
"Unfortunately the night work might disturb residents living nearby, but the crews will be working to get the noisy part of the work done as early as possible in their shift to keep the disruption to a minimum," Davison said.