Have you ever had your sewer line cleaned?

[papie]

Or inspected?

Our toilets keep clogging.  To the point where if we poop, we must flush once before wiping.  And our two bathtubs are draining slowly.  And this week, a smell is coming from the kitchen sink. 

I was going to call a plumber (again!) and then something clicked: wait a minute, it doesn't seem right that all those things clog at the same time randomly? and last time a plumber checked our toilet, he removed it and looked forever, even with a camera and never found anything wrong with it and suggested we just buy a new one.  Except now they ALL clog. 

Sooooo, I have someone coming by for my sewer line in an hour.  Exciting! lol  I am seriously curious to see what they do and how though. 

[papie]

Apr 24, 2015 11:14:57 GMT -5 mofongo said:

Is that what you call it?

I can't tell if this is a joke, a question, or you making fun of my english?

[papie]

YOU PERVS.

[pixy0stix]

We have to have ours cleaned yearly. Little roots from the trees get into it and back things up.

[shamrockshake]

we did a couple months after we moved into our house. Things were doing exactly what you said yours are doing and then one night the toilet started backing up and filling our basement with water! H and his dad snaked the line from our house all the way to the street and it was clear so we called the township who, very impressively, within an hour, had a company here with a huge snake, ran it into the middle of the street and pulled out a freaking bath towel that was jammed in there, it had to have been effecting our neighbors too, it was coming off the line to the whole side of the street.

[dirtyred]

Yes, it was a couple hundred dollars for the sewer guys (any one here old enough to remember the Roto Rooter commercials?) come out and get all the tree roots and crap that have made their way into the sewers.  It's a good idea to do that sort of maintenance on a regular basis so the roots don't crack your sewer pipes, leading to an expensive repair and your yard dug up with a back hoe.

[snipsnsnails]

We have a septic system and we're having our mainline cleared in 2 weeks. It's always something!

[papie]

Apr 24, 2015 11:23:18 GMT -5 kevin arnold said:

Maybe it's a fatberg.

ew ew ew ew

[1confused1]

Yep, tree roots were the issue. I knew it was when the toilets, shower and bathtub all backed up at the same time.

[gault]

I lived in a house that should have been condemned. You'd take a shower and brownish-grey junk would start coming OUT of the drain. Turns out the pipes were made of copper and they corroded, making it easy for roots to take over. The gunk in the tub was from the stuff accidentally poured down the sink in the kitchen.

[Deleted]

Apr 24, 2015 11:27:29 GMT -5 shamrockshake said:

we did a couple months after we moved into our house. Things were doing exactly what you said yours are doing and then one night the toilet started backing up and filling our basement with water! H and his dad snaked the line from our house all the way to the street and it was clear so we called the township who, very impressively, within an hour, had a company here with a huge snake, ran it into the middle of the street and pulled out a freaking bath towel that was jammed in there, it had to have been effecting our neighbors too, it was coming off the line to the whole side of the street.

lol w.t.f.  How did a bath towel even get in there?

[papie]

Welp, $250 later, there is nothing wrong with my pipes. They unclogged everything that needed unclogging while they were here, and why they keep clogging remains a mistery.

[Deleted]

Apr 24, 2015 11:14:57 GMT -5 mofongo said:

Is that what you call it?

LOL, I thought the SAME THING

[livinitup]

It's worth checking. My parents have an oddly shaped line and need them cleaned 1x /year to prevent blocks and back ups. Hope you find a solution soon.

[shamrockshake]

Apr 24, 2015 13:09:44 GMT -5 papie said:

Welp, $250 later, there is nothing wrong with my pipes. They unclogged everything that needed unclogging while they were here, and why they keep clogging remains a mistery.

it could be the line into your house, that was our problem. see above ^^ a freaking towel was stuck in the pipe, somewhere out in the middle of the street, not OUR pipes

[renna]

Like some other posters we had ours proactively cleaned after having shower water back up from the mainline a few years in a row. It was always tree roots. We didn't even have a large tree in the front yard by the mainline but we had a small tree and some bushes. The man who came to clean out the line would pull up roots and we could see it was definitely getting in the line.

Last year we paid close to $6K to have the old line replaced and also sleeved all the way out to where it meets the city line under our city street. When they pulled up the TERRA COTTA-LOOKING PIPES we could see that they looked like little forests inside! ACK! That was money well-spent, for sure, so it's very possible, papie, that nature is getting in there and causing problems for you.

I'm glad it was only $250 to fix it this time. I hope that fixes the problem for you.

By the way, our house is 90 years old so I think those were really old pipes we replaced. I'm not sure how old your house is, or if this is "every house has this problem eventually with tree roots" kind of thing?

[MixedBerryJam]

Apr 24, 2015 13:09:44 GMT -5 papie said:

Welp, $250 later, there is nothing wrong with my pipes. They unclogged everything that needed unclogging while they were here, and why they keep clogging remains a mistery.

That's super cheap, in my limited experience. I'm glad it was nothing. I had a similar situation where all of a sudden everything was slow/clogging. Randomly puddles (yuck) would show up in my cellar that turned out to be the toilet that wasn't even used overflowing because the water backed up because it was draining so slowly from elsewhere in the house. They opened a pipe and stuck a camera (like a giant colonoscopy, I guess) into the pipe and found roots from a tree in the yard. They told me I'd probably need this ?$800? service annually, so I ripped out the tree instead. I love my sunny green lawn now.

[thedutchgirl]

Do they work better now after the cleaning? In our old house we had to replace about 8 feet of the main line to the street and then would get it snaked again every couple years for the tree roots. (The cast iron pipes had collapsed, which necessitated the replacement.)

[blackcat]

My parents are going through this same exact thing with their brand new house. The plumbers have been out maybe 4-5 times in the past 1.5 years because the toilet(s) will start randomly clogging and plunging with a plunger doesn't help. At one point, all three toilets in their house clogged up and they had no functioning toilet, which was awful. My Dad called the plumber's emergency line and they told him they'd be out there in 2 days, he told them that they had no working toilets in the house and he needed someone out there that same day. They have run cameras down there, snaked the line, everything, there is no blockage, and it's very annoying for them because it just sporadically happens. One of the workers did mention that he thought *maybe* the line was run too flat or something and the water wasn't running away from the house, so clogs were developing under the house from time to time. I told him maybe to buy some new toilets with more powerful flushes, or at least one, to see if that helps. They are very frustrated.

[pixy0stix]

Apr 24, 2015 16:07:21 GMT -5 blackcat said:

My parents are going through this same exact thing with their brand new house. The plumbers have been out maybe 4-5 times in the past 1.5 years because the toilet(s) will start randomly clogging and plunging with a plunger doesn't help. At one point, all three toilets in their house clogged up and they had no functioning toilet, which was awful. My Dad called the plumber's emergency line and they told him they'd be out there in 2 days, he told them that they had no working toilets in the house and he needed someone out there that same day. They have run cameras down there, snaked the line, everything, there is no blockage, and it's very annoying for them because it just sporadically happens. One of the workers did mention that he thought *maybe* the line was run too flat or something and the water wasn't running away from the house, so clogs were developing under the house from time to time. I told him maybe to buy some new toilets with more powerful flushes, or at least one, to see if that helps. They are very frustrated.

No maybe, this is what's happening. They're going to have to dig up the line and slope it better.