Unfortunately, this is also the time when many Wheaton, Il families discover that it’s time to get the drains cleaned.  And generally, there’s only one way we discover that it’s time to call the plumber: the, sink backs up, the bathtub won’t drain and the toilet overflows!

What To Do When The Toilet Overflows

Quick plunger work can save the day if you’re dealing with a minor clog. But if you’re like a lot of families, it’s not a minor clog that’s got you down.  This is the time of year when Americans do the most laundry — and that means lots of soap, not to mention the dirt and debris from your clothes, goes down the drain.  Kids eager to look their very best spend lots of time in the shower — and there, we have soap, shampoo, and hair combining to clog your pipes.  If you can’t dislodge these materials with your home plunger, it’s time to call your Wheaton, Il plumber.

Fixing Clogged Drains: What It Takes

The only effective way to stop the clogged sink, backed up pipes, and overflowing toilet is to remove whatever is obstructing the water.  Clogs can be formed from hair, grease, food debris, and toys that a toddler sent down ‘exploring’ – but they can also be caused by tree roots, or damaged or collapsed pipes.  Once upon a time, the only way to remedy the issue was to have a team tear up your yard, excavating until the trouble spot was found.  This costs a lot of money and makes a big mess.  Luckily, video inspection technology makes discovering the source of  a clog much easier — and excavation, if it’s required, can be targeted specifically at the site of the clog.  Often, clogs can be alleviated without any excavation: your Wheaton, IL plumber has the tools it takes to fix the problem so you can focus on what’s important — getting the kids back to school!

Look For The Warning Signs

There are signs that every homeowner should watch for, letting them know that it might be time for sewer cleaning. These include gurgling or noisy pipes, especially if they’re very slow to drain. The smell of sewage is another sign, as is standing water on top of your ground or pavement – particularly on a dry day! Brown rusty water coming out of your pipes is a big red flag. Try turning on more than one tap in your home: if the pressure drops off significantly when you do this, it’s time to call your Naperville plumber.

Sewer Clogs Have Many Causes

Homeowners who are scrupulously careful to never, ever let anything go down the drain that wasn’t intended to go there can be shocked by the news that their sewer lines are clogged. Be aware that there are many reasons a sewer line can clog. Sewage backup is one cause, but natural disasters, including floods, mudflows, and landslides can have an impact. The age of your home’s sewage lines is also a factor: older pipes have been known to collapse, literally becoming their own obstruction.

Tree Roots Mean Trouble

Tree roots are the cause of more than a few sewer clogs. Roots are amazingly powerful: the need to grow and seek out water can force roots to go through asphalt and concrete. The material your sewer pipes is made of doesn’t stand a chance, particularly if you have older sewer pipes made from organic materials, such as clay and concrete. The most vulnerable section is the joints, where lengths of pipe meet. If those joints weren’t sealed, you’re particularly likely to have problems in this area. Root killing chemicals applied above ground promise great results, but the results are often less than satisfying.

You Can See What The Problem Is

Sewer cleaning used to be a very mysterious operation. Everything takes place underground, out of sight, and inaccessible. To discover where the problem lay used to require extensive and expensive labor and sometimes excavation. However, advances in technology have made camera inspection possible. Using specially designed cameras, your Naperville plumber can look inside of pipes, above and underground, inside and outside of buildings. This makes identifying the problem much faster, and if you wish, you can see for yourself what the issue is. All of the images the camera captures can be recorded. You’re saving time and money, while protecting the integrity of your home and yard!

What Happens Next

The plumber or company you’ve contracted to do your sewer cleaning can tackle the problem in a number of ways. The most common ways include the use of high velocity jetting, in which water is pushed through your sewer pipes at an extremely high pressure. This blasts obstructions and clogs out of the way: imagine the force of a fire hose, in an extremely targeted location – what can stand up to that? Another option is power bucketing. Power bucketing uses machine driven buckets and scrapers that are sized specifically for the pipe being cleaned. This is often the option of choice for severely clogged sewers.

Think Prevention!

Plan ahead to eliminate headaches, hassles, and the need to pay top dollar for emergency service calls. Scheduling regular sewer cleaning as part of your regular household maintenance routine is smart thinking. Too often, our plumbing is something we never think about until there’s a problem – and once there’s a problem, it’s not something you can ignore! Make life easy for yourself by acknowledging that your home’s plumbing needs attention and upkeep. Talk with your Naperville, IL plumber about the best time to schedule your annual sewer cleaning.

Many plumbers in the Naperville area can provide drain cleaning services. It can be difficult to choose which professional you want to hire to clean your drains, especially when you’re not familiar with plumbing and don’t know what services you need to resolve your clogged drains. Video inspection is offered by many leading plumber contractors. Video inspection is a service in which a specially designed and sized camera into the plumbing system. The images can be recorded. Why would you want a video inspection of your pipes? There are four primary reasons.

Check Your Plumbing System’s Condition

Video inspection is a superior tool to assess your plumbing system’s structural integrity. As plumbing is often hidden from view – beneath floors, buildings, and the ground – you can’t easily do a visual inspection. Who wants to dig up their yard in order to ensure all the pipes are in good repair? Your Naperville plumber can assure you that most of the plumbing systems in the region have not been visually inspected since they were installed – unless, of course, a catastrophic failure has forced the replacement of those pipes! Video inspection can let you get a much better idea of your plumbing system’s condition. If you know the system is in rough shape and that repairs are not in the too-distant future, you can begin budgeting for this expense. On the other hand, if everything is in good repair, you can enjoy peace of mind!

Locate Problems With Pinpoint Accuracy

Something’s stopping the water from draining after your morning shower – and there’s a reason the toilet’s not flushing properly. Diagnosing what the problem could be used to be expensive: after a first rudimentary efforts at drain cleaning, there was no alternative but to start digging to see where the leak, break, or defect might be. If you’re searching for a blocked pipe – the most common problem homeowners experience – it can mean examining your system from the point where the water leaves your house through your all of your interior pipes and then out, underneath the ground. Video inspection streamlines the process: the plumbing contractor can quickly and efficiently locate the blockage, whether it’s grease, hair, household items, crumbling pipes, tree roots, or anything else. A solution quickly follows.

Document and Record

Video inspection systems record what they see. These images can be saved as still images or as video tape. The plumbing contractor or drain cleaning company uses these images to resolve or abate the problem, but they have an additional value. Homeowners can use these images to provide documentary support for an insurance claim or for litigation purposes. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when it comes to protecting your interests, those images could be priceless!

Map Your Plumbing System

Do you know where your home’s pipes are located? Can you identify, with any confidence, where your septic tank is, or where you connect with the Naperville sewer system? This is knowledge that’s essential, particularly if you plan to expand your home’s footprint. Adding a deck, patio, or porch? Make sure you won’t have to tear it out when your pipes need repair! Video inspection can provide the new homeowner with critical information about where the plumbing system is located. This is essential information about your home’s systems that you’ll want to retain for future repairs or if you want to sell your home. Video inspection can be used to ensure the system built matches what was supposed to be installed. It can also track modifications to your existing plumbing system.

Video Inspection Plays a Critical Role In Drain Cleaning

Video inspection is among the most significant advances in drain cleaning technology. It saves the homeowner time and money. Your Naperville plumber can use video inspection to quickly locate where the problem is. If excavation is necessary, it’s now possible to dig specifically at the point of need, rather than having to tear up the entire yard. Additionally, video inspection provides the homeowner with several other benefits: an accurate assessment of your plumbing system’s condition, records of your pipes and any problems that may be there, and a map of your plumbing system.

To determine what’s clogging up your pipes, think about what’s going down the drain.  If it’s your kitchen sink that is backed up, the culprit is often grease. Warm water makes grease melt and float on the water, but once that hot water is gone, the grease collects and solidifies into a block.  Coffee grounds, food debris, and even the occasional bit of dish cloth or silverware find their way into your pipes as well, resulting in a tangled obstruction that water simply cannot get by.  Do not attempt to resolve a grease clog by pouring hot water down the drain: all you’re doing is forcing the clog to melt and reform further down your pipes, where repair may be more difficult and costly.

Clogged pipes in the bathroom are another issue.  Bathtub and sink clogs are often due to hair, soap, and shaving cream. The toiletries we use each and every day contain a lot of oil and fat, which can act much the same way as grease does in the kitchen.  When we turn our attention to a clogged toilet, the picture becomes a little bit more complicated.  Things get flushed away that were never meant to – from diapers and feminine hygiene items to whatever an adventurous toddler can get their hands on.

If you are going to attempt to resolve the situation yourself, you have a few options. The plunger can help, using suction to pull the clog out of place at least enough to let the water go down.  Bear in  mind that shifting debris within a pipe is not actually fixing the clog, it’s just buying you time until you have another problem.  There are chemical drain cleaners that remove organic material, but these are of limited effectiveness if you’ve got a child’s toy, cell phone, or other thing you wish really hadn’t gone down the toilet clogging up your pipes. Enzyme cleaners are a green option, but they work very slowly: not a great option for busy families who need the bathroom working now.

Calling your Lagrange Park plumber can offer you the ultimate in a quick and easy resolution.  Plumbers handle clogged drains all of the time: they know the many ways to address each type of blocked pipe. They have the equipment to make the job easy: while you’re trying to force a department store snake down your tub drain – and likely scratching the tub in the process – only to discover it doesn’t have the heft or the reach to resolve the problem, they’ve got the professional version and can fix the problem in a few minutes. Prevention can be more than half the battle.  Preventative drain cleaning is a service your Lagrange Park plumber will happily perform, generally at a fraction of the cost of an emergency service call.  Consider adding regular drain cleaning to the routine of chores you have done on an annual basis as part of caring for your home and protecting the investment you’ve made in it. There’s no fuss, no mess, and you get the peace of mind of knowing that every time you flush the toilet, everything will go where it’s supposed to!