Sewer Repair Services in Chicagoland

Of all the possible plumbing problems your home could face, a sewer problem is likely the scariest. It’s something you can’t solve yourself, and it can have a detrimental effect on your entire home. When you start noticing gurgling in your toilet or other drains in your home, you need to call a sewer professional.

Common Sewer Line Issues in Chicagoland

Sewer lines are where everything leaves the house.. All the food you washed down the kitchen drain, all the ??? that went down the bathroom drain, and so on. These can lead to common issues like clogs and buildup that can trap other material and slowly close off the flow of water down the line.

Clogs really are one of the most common problems you’ll find, and they’re often due to three things: Materials going into the sewer that shouldn’t be there, hardened grease balls, and trapped material. First, when someone puts something into the drains that shouldn’t be there, like paper towels down the toilet, those materials can create a block themselves. Take those paper towels, for example; those are made to absorb water and stay intact for as long as possible, instead of disintegrating like toilet paper is supposed to do. That means that when you try to flush them down a toilet, they’ll form a mass that gets bigger as it absorbs more water. The result is a clog once the mass encounters a point in the drain pipes that’s too narrow for the mass to pass through. Tree roots are often the choke point, causing the restriction.

Grease and fat may look like liquid when you wash them off plates and pans with hot water. But the water carrying the fats cools down as it moves through the kitchen drain, making the fats re-solidify. The result is a clog, again when the hardened mass coats the inner walls of the kitchen drain.

Limescale from hard water and biofilm from decomposing food can coat the insides of pipes, narrowing the opening through which water can flow. Anything other than liquid that tries to pass through the pipe can become caught on the ever-narrowing walls, eventually closing it off.

And clogs aren’t all there is; leaks and damage are common issues, too. Age can make lines deteriorate and crack, tree roots can intrude into those cracks and make them worse. Even with no cracks in the sewer roots will invade through the hubs where two sections of pipe connect.