In spring, thawing ground, soil shifting, and heavy precipitation can take a toll on sewer lines. Your sewer line serves every drain and plumbing-connected appliance in your home. Keeping it clean, intact, and obstruction-free can help you avoid whole-house backups, drain problems, and widespread water damage. Use this ultimate spring cleaning checklist to prepare your sewer line for the risks and ravages of the warm season.
Check for Multi-Drain Issues
Multi-drain issues are among the most common signs of sewer line problems. While having a single, foul-smelling drain isn’t a big deal, having multiple slow-moving and malodorous drains at once often is. Be on the lookout for pungent sewer gas odors, drain gnat infestations, and bubbling, hissing, or gurgling sounds. Finding and addressing multi-drain issues at the start of spring will prevent serious blockages and backups later on.
Schedule Professional Drain Cleaning
Adding equal parts white vinegar and baking soda to your drains is a great way to freshen them up throughout the year. However, all homes need professional drain cleaning service annually. Spring is the perfect time to schedule this service. Treatments like hydro-steaming, hydro-jetting, and mechanized drain snaking slough off buildups of soap scum, body oils, grease, and biofilms. Maintaining clean, swift-moving drains will stave off drain flies and drain odors. By expediting wastewater flow, drain cleaning can also prevent oily, tacky residues from adhering to your sewer pipe’s interior walls.
Inspect Your Slab
Another important thing to check is your slab. A portion of your sewer line travels beneath your home’s slab. If your house has a basement, look for rank, moldering odors, increased humidity, and visible moisture on exposed concrete. The sudden development of powdery, white coatings or pooling water could indicate loose or offset pipe sections, leaky connections, or age-related cracks.
Address Aggressive Tree and Weed Roots
Tree and weed roots can encroach upon sewer pipes by entering through cracks and other openings just 1 millimeter wide. To prevent this, weed your yard and use an appropriate herbicide. If you have trees with aggressive roots that are within 15 feet of your sewer pipe, consider installing root barriers as well.
Schedule a Sewer Camera Inspection
During sewer camera inspections, plumbers insert cameras into sewer lines to assess their integrity. Attached to flexible hoses, these tools travel the length of sewer pipes while sharing helpful footage. Regular sewer line inspections allow plumbers to catch and correct developing issues before they escalate. These inspections can identify invasive roots, cracked or offset sections, snagged, slow-degrading waste, sewer pipe bellies, and more.
Check for Soil Shifting, Erosion, and Compression
Winter runoff and thawing can lead to soil shifting, erosion, or compression. Adverse soil movement can affect the portion of your sewer pipe that travels underground to the sewer main. If you notice significant changes in your grading or landscape, schedule sewer inspection service right away.
Get Caught Up on Sewer Service
Just as all homes need regular sewer line inspections, all houses need regular sewer line cleaning service, too. Much like drain cleaning service, available sewer cleaning techniques include hydro-jetting, hydro-steaming, and mechanized snaking. While most homes need sewer inspections and cleaning every 18 to 22 months, some require these services more often. Consider scheduling a sewer inspection and cleaning service every spring if you’ve had problems with tree root encroachment or whole-house backups before. Call Roberson’s Plumbing & Septic in Wilson, NC today for all of your sewer line needs.