You want to avoid the disappointment of watching raw sewage back up into your Indianapolis home. You may never look at your bathtub, shower pans, toilets, sinks or drains the same way again after reading one of these events. Fortunately, there are methods to recognize a backup before it happens.

The Signs Your Drain Clog Is in the Main Sewer Line

You’ll notice the four signs below when the pipe that transports waste out of the home becomes clogged.

1. All Your Drains Reek

Having one drain that smells like rotten eggs is not necessarily unusual. And these features are regularly bombarded with wet, organic waste. Sticky residues, such as soap scum and grease, can coat drain insides and pipe interior to form a fetid puddle.

There might be a tiny piece of rancid meat stuck in your garbage disposal impeller blades, or some other accumulation of gunk and bacteria that give off foul odors. Problems such as these are fairly easy to fix using simple drain cleaning techniques or just scheduling a quick drain cleaning service appointment with an expert.

But if the drains of all your home are releasing an awful stench then it means the problem is deep in your plumbing system. With a blockage in a sewer line, what you’re smelling is water and solid waste that isn’t flowing.

Don’t let the backup move closer to your home or inside; call a plumber immediately!

2. Your Drains Are Clogged or Slow-Moving

Most signs of a sewer line clog manifest across all drains and their connected fixtures and appliances simultaneously. All of your drains lead to the same place-the one exit from your home: your sewer line.

Like smelly drains, blocked or slow-moving drains indicate serious problems when all drains in the home suddenly fail to do their job. When you take a shower, you shouldn’t end up ankle-deep in water and you shouldn’t have to brush your teeth or wash dishes in sinks filled with your own swill.

Slow-running drains can also lead to issues for your dishwasher, washing machine and toilets. If your appliances suddenly are misbehaving by taking longer to complete cycles, stopping mid-cycle or restarting, an imminent backup may be to blame.

The backup of nearby plumbing fixtures can occur when using water reliant appliances with the sewer line clogged. So if you run your dishwasher and your toilet backs up or your sink fills with foul water, turn the machine off and call a plumber.

3. You Hear Deep Gurgling Noises from Your Pipes in All Your Home

You might also hear gurgling sounds from your toilets or sink before your drains begin moving slowly and smelling bad. These are a sign of an early clog. More often than not, they mean your outside sewer line has been infiltrated by the roots of nearby trees and weeds.

Pipes that transport wastewater away from homes are abundant in nutrients and moisture. Since these pipes age and develop little cracks, tree roots and weeds quickly take advantage of any ingress available.

Inside, these growths thrive. Even worse, they trap and hold little bits of solid waste as wastewater flows by. The matter collects and creates over time a solid wall, not allowing any organic waste and even water to get through.

If you have someone in your home who is sending “flushable” wipes down the commode, this, too, can be part of the problem. And unlike toilet paper, these products don’t break down as quickly when immersed in water. When tree roots invade your pipes, these wipes can form huge clots that need expensive interventions.

A gurgle from drains and toilets means that the slow flow of water is draining through a partially blocked sewer line. While gurgling sounds aren’t the worst thing to hear from your plumbing – that’s reserved for slow-moving or odoriferous drains – they are the first and strongest signal that you need to take immediate action. Getting a plumber out for a partial blockage is frequently less expensive and definitely less of a hassle overall than waiting until backed-up wastewater creates a whole-house blockage.

4. You Have an Unnaturally Lush Landscape or a Smelly, Sunken Lawn

Additionally, breaks in sewer lines and sewer lines overtaken by tree roots and weeds can also affect the appearance and integrity of your yard. The nutrients in the pipe that help tree roots and weeds flourish can give the landscape an unhealthy luster if they begin to leak out.

You should also watch for smelly, sunken areas where excess moisture has made the ground soft. While very cracked sewer lines are more likely to spew waste into your yard rather than push it back into your home, smaller cracks with constant leaks may indicate that your sewer line has been infiltrated by widespread growths. In which case, a fatberg of a major sewer line blockage is happening already.

What to Do in Case of a Whole-House Back-up

If you didn’t see any of these four signs and already have a whole-house backup, shut your water supply off, as well as electricity, and go outside the building. Pockets of black water are lethal to both animals and humans.

Even prolonged inhalation of their vapors can bring on symptoms – including nausea, vomiting and dizziness. If any of the wastewater comes into contact with your clothes or skin, shower and change as soon as possible.

A sewer line clog that causes a whole-house backup will require resolution only by a licensed plumber.

Tips for Avoiding Sewer Line Clogs

The best prevention against sewer line clogs is to watch what you flush down your commodes. Personal care wipes advertised as “flushable” frequently cause ruin in home plumbing. Even if these items aren’t snagged on weeds or tree roots in sewer lines, they can be caught on small rough bumps at pipe interiors.

Also, they retain oils and fats and stick to each other. When they’re used en masse, these odd accumulations ultimately combine into “fatbergs” or “smallbergs” that block home plumbing systems or become serious issues within commercial sewer systems. The only things that belong in your toilets are human waste and toilet paper.

It’s important to care for your landscape, too. Pull out as many aggressive weeds as you see, particularly around the sewer line. Do not plant any bushes, trees, or other vigorous plantings in this area either.

Restrict what you put down your kitchen drains. Garbage disposals are poorly named. Pushing too much of the wrong food waste down your kitchen sink can ruin this appliance and ultimately create issues in your sewer line. If in doubt, throw the food away instead of trying to grind it.

An annual whole-house plumbing inspection will help your plumber catch the signs of things going wrong before a blockage gets out of hand. Using hydro-jetting or hydro-steaming techniques, plumbers can flush out debris-laden pipes. They can also perform sewer line camera inspections to find clogs and locate them.

We care for residential plumbing systems in Albuquerque, NM.

We provide sewer repair and replacement, leak detection, plumbing inspection and general plumbing repair. We also install water heaters, water softeners, sump pumps, and more. Contact Day & Night Plumbing today to book an appointment.