We know you take pride in your house and always aim to make it as clean and welcoming as possible. The end of the year, when you’re likely to be entertaining more guests and family members than usual, is when you’ll be especially concerned with the cleanliness and overall pleasantness of your home.
Nothing can ruin that pleasantness faster than the rank smell of sewage wafting from the plumbing! Even if no guest enters your house, you don’t want to live with this kind of odor. Not only is the sewer gas you’re smelling noxious, but it’s also unhealthy to breathe, causing symptoms like dizziness and respiratory problems.
Why Is This Happening?
There are several potential causes for sewage odors to come from the plumbing. They range from simple-to-remedy nuisances to major plumbing repair jobs. You can learn quickly how serious the issue is so you know if you need to call a plumber in Hamilton, OH to solve it.
The dried p-trap
This is the most basic cause for sewer smells coming from a drain. The p-trap is the name of the curved drainpipe section directly under a sink. The curved shape is designed to trap water in the section, and this water barrier stops gas from the sewer line from escaping through the drain. (Sewer gas naturally rises.) If a sink is not used over a period of a few weeks—something that can often happen with bar sinks or sinks in guestrooms—the water in the p-trap will evaporate and allow sewage gas to rise from the drain.
If you find the sewer smell is coming from only a single drain, run water down the drain for about a minute to restore the p-trap. This should eliminate the sewer odor.
Clogged drain vents and leaking drain vents
The drain vents are pipes attached to the drain lines that allow sewer gas to vent up through openings in the roof of the house. This prevents a build-up of pressure inside the drainage system. These vents can become clogged by animal nests or debris on the roof, which will then force sewer gas up through the water in the p-traps.
The vent pipes can also spring leaks in the walls of your house and send the sewer gas straight into rooms. In both situations, you need a plumber to fix the problem: either unclogging the roof vents or locating the drain vent leaks and fixing it.
Sewer line clogging or breaks
The most serious possibility for these bad odors is down in the sewer line that runs under your property to the municipal system. Clogging, tree root infiltration, or a break in the pipeline will cause sewage to start backing up. The bad smells are only the first warning—you’ll soon have fully clogged up drains around the house and even sewage entering through basement drains. Sewer repairs are a major plumbing job, but you can count on our plumbers to use the best in trenchless technology to quickly correct the problem.