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sewer

Ah, Crap! or Ways to Avoid Drain Blockage

February 21, 2017

floodWe touched on this briefly back in November, but we wanted to focus on drains and less on sewers this time around.

You will probably have to call for service for various aspects of your home or car during your lifetime. However, you can make these visits rarer by doing some preventative work on your own. Changing the oil in your car, even if you have someone else do it, will make your car last vastly much longer than if you fail to do so.

So it is with your humble household drains. A little care goes a long way in time, labor, and money.

  • The sewer 
    Image courtesy of www.deadlinedetroit.com

    Image courtesy of www.deadlinedetroit.com

If your sewer line seems to clog every year or two, you might as well bite the proverbial bullet by getting a diagnosis on the line and paying to have it fixed. You’ll save money and a headache in the long game by clearing out the tree roots, fixing the cracked pipe, or whatever the cause of the clog may be.

 

 

  • Lint catcher 2f0dca77b46884a53110256d6b72a256

Every time you wash clothes bits and pieces of fabric come off and end up in the drain. These particles can add up to a clog. To prevent this a mesh trap purchased from a hardware store or even an old nylon stocking can keep the lint from accumulating in your drain.

 

  • Drain cleaner aid5207-728px-Unclog-a-Toilet-Step-20-Version-4

Fight the marketing! Don’t pour acid cleaners down your drains. Instead, if you’re going for preventative maintenance, use a granular bacterial cleaner. It’s safe for all kinds of pipes and traps and you can use it in a septic system, too. You want to break up beginning clogs, not corrode your pipes.

 

  • Ban the FOG 
    Not that kind of fog! (Image courtesy of Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons)

    Not that kind of fog! (Image courtesy of Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons)

Perhaps your mother told you never to pour fat, oil, or grease (FOG) down the kitchen sink drain–or perhaps not. To those mothers who did, they were right. Sure, it may be hot and liquid going down the drain now, but soon it will cool and congeal, creating a nifty block somewhere in your line waiting to grab more debris. Someday that little blob could grow to stop everything you send at it.

 

  • Cement? Really? 
    Image courtesy Creative Commons

    Image courtesy Creative Commons

If you’ve got a DIYer in the house, he or she may have been tempted to dump the leftover cement, grout, joint compounds, or whatever other sealing substance in your sink. Get them to stop–NOW! Just like FOG, that stuff can accumulate, grabbing other particles, eventually prompting a call to a plumber. Save yourself some cash, don’t dump it in the sink.

  • Ewww! Hair! drain-weasel-2

Sometimes you just have to clean out the shower drain. You can make it slightly less icky by installing a screen for the tub/shower drain. It’s your call.

 

  • Not everything goes in the garbage disposal 
    Image courtesy szczel and Creative Commons

    Image courtesy szczel and Creative Commons

Instead of squandering all the goodness that is food waste, you could easily compost and make some free fertilizer for your garden or give it away to a gardener. The point is garbage disposals are meant to grind up smaller pieces of food waste. Dumping your leftovers down the drain is only asking for a clog sooner or later.

Do the right thing (if possible) and compost your plant waste.

  • This one is embarrassing…and the plumber knows when you’re lying. toilet-stall1-800x600

We’ve seen it in public restrooms…people using the toilet as a wastebasket. Sure, bodily waste belongs IN the toilet, and the associated paper, but nothing else. Plumbers will tell you that some people practice that behavior with their home toilet. If you want to avoid paying a plumber for something easily avoided, don’t put anything that should go in a wastebasket into your toilet.

There will  be times that you simply have to call a plumber to help you with a problem that is beyond your skill or time available. But you can skip calling one as often if you follow these few tips to keep your plumbing systems relatively clog free.

 

Filed Under: Plumbing Tagged With: clogs, composting, DIY, drain cleaner, drains, garbage disposal, hair, lint catcher, plumber, plumbing, sewer, toilet, waste

What’s That Smell? A Primer on Sewer Back-Up

November 9, 2016

Image courtesy of schrierc and Creative Commons

Image courtesy of schrierc and Creative Commons

Sewers, believe it or not, have been around for over 4,000 years–though not every people embraced them or even knew about them. Archaeological records show that two cities in the Indus Valley in India had working sewers (and outdoor flush toilets) around the year 2600 B.C.

We’ve made a few improvements in that time.

However, contemporary sewers will break down and have problems eventually, usually back-ups inside a home or business or visible outside above the sewer line.

How Do I Know I Have a Sewer Problem?

This might seem a funny question, but you may not know the symptoms. If you have any of the following you may have a malfunctioning sewer:

  • slow drain
  • gurgling drain
  • toilet not flushing
  • garbage disposal won’t drain
  • the bathroom lavatory (sink) takes an hour to drain
  • water comes up through a basement floor drain after a flushed toilet or drained laundry tub

This is not, unfortunately, a DIY fix.

20160426_100802

 

What Caused This Back-Up?

There are a number of culprits for sewer back-ups including tree roots, breakage of clay pipe, corrosion of cast-iron pipe, FOG (fat, oil, grease) clogs, and torrential rains or flooding. It is now a FEMA requirement that all new construction includes a backwater valve to help prevent flooding inside a building.

How Do We Stop the Bleeding?

As mentioned, this is generally not a DIY fix. The easy fix is to snake the line and clear the clog, but sometimes that can be 150′ of cable down a drain (not usually the length of a home snake). It becomes harder when the sewer line has to be dug up and replaced.

20160628_144744

As an aside, you’ll want to make sure the contractor you hire is competent. Improper installation, using the wrong glue, rushing, and general incompetence can lead to another sewer problem a few short years down the line.

You're not going to get at your sewer line with a hand shovel

You’re not going to get at your sewer line with a hand shovel

You can expect a sewer repair to cost anywhere from $200 all the way into the tens of thousands of dollars depending on the problem and complexity. The repairs can be done in a day or longer. If your municipality has to get involved that may mean securing bonds, special approval and permits, which, of course, only makes the process longer.

The Care (and Feeding?) of Your Sewer

Many sewer problems can’t be prevented by home and business owners, but you can do a few things to extend the life of your sewer line.

  • Don’t use solvents like Draino or acids–they  can cause deterioration of the lines and they can cause garbage disposals to prematurely fail.
  • For Heaven’s sake, don’t pour oils, fats, or grease down your drains. They will harden and collect somewhere in your plumbing.
  • If you know that your pipes are older, don’t use the garbage disposal as a trash can.
  • Know that cutting back tree roots by your sewer is usually only a fix for about a year. Trees gotta grow!

20161012_154824

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Plumbing Tagged With: backwater valve, drain, gurgling drain, sewer, sewer backup, sewer problems, slow drain

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