How to Prevent Sewage Backup
Freedom Plumbers & Pumpers is your sewer repair and drain cleaning specialist, and in our more than 30 years of service, we have seen too many sewage backups cause extensive damage to area homes and businesses. We never like to see residential and commercial customers in Northern Virginia suffer because of plumbing damage, so we have included a helpful reference on how you can help prevent sewage backups. If you have any additional questions about sewage backup prevention, our company, or our high-quality services, please don’t hesitate to contact our knowledgeable team.
Causes of Sewer Backups
Your sewer line is an important element of your plumbing system. When it’s working efficiently, your sewer pipes flush wastewater out of your home or office, through your pipeline, and into a municipal sewer main or a private septic tank. However, backups and other damage can occur when something begins to block your sewer pipe. Many things can cause your sewer pipes to backup, but some of the more common include:
- Invasive tree roots. Tree roots continually seek out moisture, so any wastewater leaking into the soil surrounding your sewer pipes can quickly attract roots. As those roots push their way into your Northern Virginia sewer pipes, they can obstruct the sewage flow and push it back up into your home or office.
- Blockages. Any clog or blockage inside your pipes can force wastewater up through your fixtures. Grease, oil, tampons, sanitary pads, paper towels, diapers, paint, hair, floss, and other non-degradable substances or products can get caught inside your sewer pipes and cause destructive blockages.
- Damaged Sewer Pipes. Aging sewer pipes may suffer from excessive corrosion and buildup, which can reduce efficiency and cause frustrating sewage backups. Even newer pipes can experience cracks, ruptures, and damage that can reduce your sewer pipeline’s operability.
- Too much rainwater. When excessive rainwater infiltrates your sewer pipes all at once, it could overwhelm the system. The rainwater may not all be able to drain away, forcing some back up into your home or office.
These and other issues can cause sewage backups, but before things get too out of hand, be sure to watch out for a few warning signs. By knowing the red flags that indicate sewer line damage, you can help avoid costly and unhealthy damage down the road.
Common Signs of Sewer Pipe Problems
Before successfully preventing a sewage backup into your home or office, you need to be aware of the common signs of a sewer line blockage. A common sign is drains that work very slowly. When your pipes are clear, water should move out of your fixtures and go down your drains pretty quickly, but if you’re noticing standing water that slowly empties your sinks, showers, tubs, or toilets, you may have a problem. Clogs inside your Baltimore sewer pipes can make it difficult for wastewater to move past, which can manifest itself through slow drainage in your kitchen and bathroom.
Besides slow drainage, another telltale sign of sewer pipe damage is strange smells. Foul sewage odors that cannot escape through your pipes can waft back up into your home or office, making the air quality intolerable and indicating that you have a blockage somewhere in the pipeline.
Gurgling sounds and other unusual noises can be yet another symptom of sewer line blockages. When wastewater can’t move through your pipes as it should, all the plumbing in your residential or commercial structure could be impacted. This means you could hear strange sounds from your fixtures when you are running the water.
Of course, the most obvious symptom might be the actual sewage backup. Wastewater running out over your toilet is hard to ignore, but it’s also dangerous. Wastewater can contain harmful bacteria and promote mold growth, both of which can jeopardize the health of your home, your office, and everybody inside. Not only is a sewage backup dangerous, but it can also cause costly repairs. Standing water can destroy your walls, baseboards, floors, appliances, cabinets, furniture, and more.
Diagnosing the Cause of a Sewage Backup
Determining where a tree root, blockage, scale buildup, or other obstruction is causing problems within your Washington DC pipes can be difficult. Fortunately, Freedom Plumbers & Pumpers has innovative sewer cameras that our skilled technicians can use to quickly pinpoint pipeline damage. To begin a sewer camera inspection, we can send our high-resolution camera into your pipe through an existing cleanout hole or through a small, strategically placed entry point. From the ground, our expert sewer camera inspection specialists can maneuver the flexible camera through your pipes and watch the footage it transmits to our monitors. Not only can the footage show us the materials your pipes are made of, but it can also help us determine the age and condition of your pipeline. The footage can also identify where problems are located and what specifically is causing those problems in the first place.
Removing a Sewer Pipe Blockage
After we have conducted a thorough sewer camera inspection, we can carefully insert a durable drain snake into your Virginia sewer pipeline. We can gently navigate the drain snake to the offending blockage, snag it, and remove it through your drain. Drain snaking is an efficient and effective way to clean out your pipes and restore performance back to your plumbing system.
If the sewer camera inspection located any damage that needs more in-depth repairs, we provide no-dig trenchless pipe lining as a solution. In this process, we can saturate a felt tube with an environmentally safe epoxy resin material. Our highly trained and certified technicians can move the liner through your pipe to coat its interior wall with the epoxy resin. We can inflate the tube and leave it inside your sewer pipe for a few hours to harden. Once the epoxy resin has cured, we can carefully remove the liner, use our sewer camera to do a final inspection, and verify that you have a brand new, seamless, long-lasting pipe right inside your old one. Our trenchless sewer lining technique is efficient, economical, and requires no excavation. It’s a great repair option and our licensed and insured team is fully prepared to discuss that option with you if your sewer pipes need reliable repairs.
Tips to Help You Avoid Sewage Backups
Freedom Plumbers & Pumpers provides professional plumbing repair services, yet as a home or business owner, you probably want to avoid that damage in the first place. There are some things you can do to help reduce the likelihood that you’ll experience sewage backups. Our top tips include, but are not limited to:
- Be aware of what goes into your pipes. The only things that should go into your sewer pipes are waste and toilet paper. If you’re thinking about flushing floss, coffee grounds, hair, baby wipes, cooking grease, or something else down your drains, reconsider. Those items can build up within your sewer pipes and cause costly damage.
- Consider drain traps. Drain traps are a relatively inexpensive way to safeguard your sewer pipes. When installed correctly, drain traps can keep hair, soap chunks, and other solid objects from accidentally entering your pipeline. Of course, those drain traps should be routinely emptied, so make it a habit to throw away the things your drain traps catch.
- Invest in routine preventative maintenance from Freedom Plumbers. One of the best things you can do for your residential or commercial sewer pipes is investing in routine preventative maintenance. Freedom Plumbers can visit your property on a regularly scheduled basis to conduct a sewer camera inspection, clean out small blockages, and make minor repairs before things get a chance to develop into major damage.
What to Do When Faced with a Sewage Backup
Being aware of the things entering your pipes, trapping debris before it gets a chance to cause damage, and investing in routine preventative maintenance are all great ways to help prevent sewage backups, but if you do find yourself face-to-face with wastewater coming into your home or office, don’t panic. Freedom Plumbers & Pumpers proudly offers 24/7 emergency services.
If a sewage backup is striking in the middle of the night, during the weekend, or even on a holiday break, we can rapidly respond to the situation with a reliable solution. Freedom Plumbers is a locally-owned and –operated company, so we feel a strong commitment to keeping our neighbors safe. We don’t want your home or business to suffer because of a frustrating sewage backup, so don’t hesitate to contact our team when you need a dependable service.
Call Freedom Plumbers to Schedule an Appointment (703) 895-4109
Freedom Plumbers & Pumpers is the local plumbing company you can count on. If you’re experiencing a sewage backup, you’d like to learn more about routine maintenance that can help prevent a sewage backup, or you have additional questions about our other high-quality services, give us a call or contact us online. We look forward to providing you with exceptional customer service and reliable results.
