Reading the evidence
How to read your sewer scope report
Displaced joint," "major blockade," offset, belly: the jargon on a camera report, translated into verdicts — what's a cleaning, what's a repair…
Read more →Reading the evidenceSewer line second opinion
Somebody quoted you four or five figures to replace everything. Before you sign or refuse, here's how a second look actually works — and why the first question is…
Read more →Reading the evidenceHow to find your cleanout
The capped pipe that decides how every drain job at your house gets done. What it is, where yours probably is, and why a broken cap is a quiet way rain and roots get in.
Read more →The big decisions
Clean it or replace it? The sewer line maths
A working rooter's formula — cleanings per year, times 1.75, times the years you'll stay — run against the replacement quote, so the decision is arithmetic…
Read more →The big decisionsCable vs hydro jetting
Which tool, for which clog, in which pipe — including the third answer nobody selling you a cleaning wants to give: sometimes neither, because the pipe itself has failed.
Read more →The big decisionsHow long does cast iron sewer pipe last?
The honest ranges: what a 1950s line is living on now, what a 1990s PVC line has ahead of it, and why the era your house was built predicts your drain problems better…
Read more →The big decisionsOrangeburg pipe: the pipe with four names
Orange bird, orange pipe, stromburg, asphalt pipe — one material, pressed from wood pulp and tar, in the ground under thousands of post-war Nashville homes and past its…
Read more →Why it keeps happening
Why does my drain keep clogging?
A clog that comes back isn't bad luck. It's a belly, roots or scale that a cable punched through and left behind — until a camera proves which one, you're…
Read more →Why it keeps happeningTree roots in your sewer line
Roots don't break sound pipe; they move into joints that are already leaking. Which trees do it, what cutting actually accomplishes, and the honest limits of every…
Read more →Why it keeps happeningWhy does my drain back up when it rains?
A backup that only happens in a storm is a different diagnosis from a clog: inflow and infiltration, a combined sewer doing what it was built to do, and the one rule…
Read more →Why it keeps happeningDrain descaling: restoring cast iron from inside
Chain flails and milling heads that strip decades of tuberculation off a cast iron wall — when the pipe underneath is worth saving, and how channel rot says it…
Read more →The kitchen, the bathroom, and the calendar
What can actually go down the drain?
Metro Water Services' own do-not-flush list, the truth about "flushable" wipes, and what a garbage disposal is and isn't built to eat.
Read more →The kitchen, the bathroom, and the calendarBrown Friday and the holiday drain load
The day after Thanksgiving is the kitchen drain's hardest shift of the year. How to get a houseful of cooking through pipes that were sized for Tuesday.
Read more →The kitchen, the bathroom, and the calendarSewer smell, gurgling and drain flies
Three symptoms, three ordinary mechanisms. A dry trap you can fix with a jug of water, a gurgle that's trying to tell you something, and little flies that live in…
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