Your home’s sewer and drain lines have probably been there since your home was built. With the average age of a home in the greater Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley area currently at 43 years old, it is just a matter of time before your sewer line breaks.

When a sewer line breaks, the leaking sewage is a hotbed of disease, hazardous chemicals, and rat infestation. You must have it repaired immediately, and Schuelke Plumbing, based in Sherman Oaks, in the plumbing company of choice by many homeowners.

The older neighborhoods in Los Angeles and the Valley often have combination sewers which collect both sewage and stormwater. The stormwater can cause the system to overflow, releasing raw sewage into local waterways.

Breaks in sewer lines commonly occur at the connection to the branch lateral at the curb line, or at the transition point from cast iron at the house to clay or cement pipe, located about five feet from your home.

Property owners are responsible for breaks between the house and the curb, including the sidewalk and parking strip located in the right-of-way. Call the professional plumbers at Schuelke Plumbing if you are concerned about your sewer lines, drain cleaning, or have any other questions about your home’s plumbing system.

When your sewer lines are clogged, this becomes your main focus until your plumbing and sewer repair specialists can be on the scene. In properties that are considered to be older construction, more than about twenty years old, there are three main causes for clogged sewers. These are:

~ excessive mortar left at soil pipe joints

~ root intrusion from trees and plants

~ broken or burst pipes

A broken pipe or pipe that has burst will allow foreign matter to enter the drainage system, leading to clogging. In newer construction, clogged sewers may be the result of poor design or construction. If the wrong fittings were used, or too little slope in the drain run was allowed, the result can be serious clogging.

Schuelke Plumbing will come to your residential or commercial property immediately and let you know what the problem is with your clogged sewer lines, as well as how we can get you back to normal as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

Plumbing problems in Los Angeles may be more extensive due to the age and condition of many of the residential and commercial buildings. When you have a blockage in your sewer line, this can be one of the most common and troubling plumbing problems you may ever have to face. Until recently there was no way to determine the cause of the problem, short of expensive and destructive excavation of the pipes.

But now plumbers have more sophisticated tools to find out exactly what is going on with the sewer lines of the property. By using an extremely small fiber optic camera that is snaked through the sewer line, plumbers at Schuelke Plumbing are now able to do a complete visual line inspection to make an evaluation of the condition of the pipes. This will also show the location of any blockage in the sewer.

The camera inspection is recorded so that the property owner and the plumber can take a look and determine what the next step should be in the repair of your sewer lines.

There are several causes of sewer line backups. These include pipes that have settled over time, crushed or broken pipes, pipes infested with tree roots, and even disjointed pipes. Many people in the Los Angeles area have planted magnolia trees and other fauna that can cause damage to the sewer lines. Improper construction or debris caught in the pipes during construction can also be to blame.

The visual inspection with the fiber optic camera may also show if you just need a rooter job for a simple sewer cleaning, although you may also want to have another inspection done after the repair is completed to make sure there are no other problems that will become problematic at some point in the future.