Drain Maintenance/Best Practices

Unless you just like seeing your plumbing technician (we don't mind, really) from time to time it is advisable to perform some simple drain maintenance and educate yourself on the proper way to use (and not use) your drain system.

The vast majority small drain stoppages are due to faulty pipes (either from age or faulty installation or both), improper drain maintenance and/or use. This article will deal with the latter. The drains in your home use gravity to move both liquid and solid waste from the fixture (toilet, shower, tub, etc...) out to the point of exit (e.g. to the city's sewage system) or to your septic system. Anything that impedes gravity from doing it's job is a potential stoppage.

Grease and oils have a nasty habit of sticking to things. Just go open up a can of Crisco® Shortening and turn it over. Notice nothing came out? Now imagine that same thing filling your pipes. That is exactly what you do not want in your pipes. Usually when grease is put in a drain it is hot, so it is liquid or at least close to liquid state. The problem is not right where you pour it in, but when it cools a few feet down the drain. Then it becomes like the shortening in the can again.

The buildup of grease and fat is like an artery in your body closing up with colestorol. Add some starchy noodles or potato peels on Thanksgiving, mix it all up and it might as well be concrete. If drains are misused and not maintained, then no amount of drain cabling can restore their flow. All the material sent down the drain settles in layers and harden on the walls of the pipes. The only option you have is to replace the lines altogether. In some cases scouring the interirior of the pipe with high pressure water, a process known as 'jetting', can restore the pipes to full flow.

 

On larger pipes, predominently the drain commonly referred to as your home's 'main line', the problems mostly stem from roots. The most common main line material used in older homes is vitrified clay pipe (VCP). The joints on these pipes are either rubber gaskets or concrete. Both of these types of joints are permeable by tree roots searcing for a new source of water. These tree roots can do a lot of damage to your pipes. Just think of them like a sidewalk underground. The roots will lift, crack and just generally destroy your main line.

Regular maintenance routines of cabling with root cutting heads and chemical treatments with rootX can keep your root problem at bay. Most commonly a homeowner will have a drain stoppage due to roots, a drain cabling will restore flow and the homeowner forgets about the problem until the next time the drains stop flowing.

The problem with this scenario is that by the time the roots grow enough to actually stop the drains from flowing they have done significant damage to your pipes. Where your home may have been a good candidate for CIPP or pipe bursting, those options may not be available to you the next time. In this way you can back yourself into a single option - the 'dig up' method. Both destructive and expensive.

 

When your drains cause you problems it is time to have a professional talk to you about what options are available to you. Contact us today for a consultation.