Drain and sewer questions, answered

Where responsibility changes is set by your utility, and it is normally at or near the property line. The practical answer usually comes from the camera: if the defect is at 47 feet in a 63-foot run, it’s yours. If the run reaches the main cleanly and the main itself is backed up, that’s a call to the utility, not a job for us, and we’ll tell you so.

Usually not. A cable does what a cable does, and on a line with an open joint it will do it again and again. The failure is that nobody said why the line keeps closing. That’s what the camera is for.

For the visit, yes: we tell you what the visit costs and what it includes before anyone drives out. For a repair, no, not on a line nobody has seen. Any number given before that is either padded or going to change.

No, and we’ll say so. A first-time block on a modern line with an obvious cause doesn’t need one. A second or third block in the same year does, because the repeat itself is the finding.

A section of pipe that has sagged, usually because the bedding under it settled, so water stands in it permanently. It can be cleaned, and it will hold water again the same afternoon, because nothing that travels through a pipe changes its slope. Fixing one means digging to it and re-laying it to grade.

Somebody does, for access and because you should be standing at the screen when the camera runs. If the point is that you can see what’s in your line, watching it is not a formality.

Sometimes, and it’s a good technology. A liner seals cracks and joints, but it follows the shape of the pipe it sits in, so it won’t lift a sag. If the camera shows standing water, lining leaves the water there.

They kill root tips inside the pipe. They don’t close the opening the roots come in through, so the next ones arrive on the same schedule. On a line with a known open joint we don’t sell them.

On a sound line with a one-off blockage, indefinitely. On a line with roots coming through an open joint, months, and we’ll give you our honest guess at how many.

We clear and camera the line to the tank, and we check the outlet side before selling a cabling, because a full tank looks just like a blocked line. Pumping the tank is a septic company’s job, and we’ll tell you when it’s that.