Drain-No!

Welcome back everyone and happy Dies Veneris, which was how the Romans said Friday!! There is nothing like a little useless trivia to start your journey with me today. That said, we are going to talk about what happens when your house gets constipated. My faithful readers will know that I use analogies with our body and our houses a lot, and here the correlation is the sewer system in your home or condo, and it’s not that different than your intestines. They both get rid of waste we no longer need.

What is the prescription when the house gets backed up you ask? There are several ways to deal with stoppages depending on the severity. If it is a basic water closet (toilet) backing up, sometimes it is as simple as a handy dandy plunger, which you probably already have. Please just try not to splash.

Next level up in stoppage land is when the plunger won’t work, or the whole house is backing up and you are getting nasty stuff up in the tubs or shower. This is where you need us to step in! We have several different types of augers and cables that, with the help of a pretty powerful machine to rotate them, can clear most stoppages and get the goo gone.

Depending on what the cause of the stoppage was we might suggest that we give the house a colonoscopy. If it’s a newer house and junior flushed his action figure, we probably don’t need the camera, however, action figures aside, taking a look at the inside of your plumbing waste removal system really can’t hurt.

One of the biggest things that we deal with in stoppage land is tree roots. Even the teeniest, tiny crack in a plumbing system can cause root intrusion and once the roots are in they thrive. Think about all the fertilizer!!  Remember the cables we talked about a minute ago? They can give you telltale signs of root trouble in the sewer and the camera at that point is a must.

We generally wash and maintain everything that we own right? Rhetorical question I know. Why can’t we wash and maintain or sewer system as well? The answer is, we can. We have a high-pressure hydro scrubber system that can wash all those years of grease, gunk and build up literally down the drain. Our jetter is perfectly safe for pipes, and in PVC systems we can get that sewer looking brand new in no time. We’ll even re-camera it to prove it!

I like a jar of peanut butter analogy here. Take your finger and stick it in the jar of peanut butter, you pull it out and you have a hole. That’s usually what happens when we just run the cables down the line to clear a stoppage. We poke a hole in it and maybe move it around so the waste starts to flow again. The jetter is like emptying the jar of peanut butter and then washing it out.

I know today was kind of a “crappy” tale, so thanks for coming along for the ride. (…groan) Oh, and one more thing — please don’t use over-the-counter caustic drain cleaners in your homes sewer system – they can damage the pipes over time.

As always I’m an email away at THW@artplumbingandac.com , you can give us a ring at 1-800-475-1504 or jump on www.artplumbingandac.com for any and all of your homes plumbing, AC, or electrical needs. Hey don’t forget, we do sprinklers as well!

House Whisperer out!!