Roots in the line
Why the roots get in, and what cutting does
Roots are not breaking your pipe. They are using it.
A clay sewer line from the 1920s to the 1950s is made of short lengths, a few feet each, with a joint at every one. Over seventy years the seals at those joints dry out and the soil shifts. A hair-thin root finds the gap, because there is water and food on the other side, and then it thickens inside the pipe.
What it looks like from inside
On the camera, a root fringe is a pale mat hanging from a joint, thicker toward the bottom of the pipe where the water runs. Several joints in a row with fringes means the line is old all the way along, not that one tree is the villain.
What cutting does
A cutter on a cable takes the roots out and the drain runs again. The joint is still open, so the roots return. Some lines stay clear for a year or two, and some need it every spring. Cutting is a good answer when the pipe is sound and you want to wait, and a poor one when it is the fifth spring.
What does not help
Taking the tree out does not mend the pipe, and the roots left in the ground keep growing toward the water until they die. Root-killing chemicals poured down a drain can harm the pipe and the yard. We would rather show you the joint.
Signs
What an owner notices first
Gurgling after a flush
Air pushed back through a line that is partly blocked, often heard at a tub or a basement floor drain.
Slow drains on the lowest floor
The basement or first-floor drains go first, because they sit lowest on the line.
Spring and summer backups
Roots grow fastest in warm weather, so a line that was fine in winter can stop in June.
A green, sunken or wet patch
A strip of lawn that is greener or softer than the rest, along the line from the house to the street.
Street trees
Do not cut the tree yet
Older Richmond streets are lined with willow oaks, sycamores and maples, and many of them are older than the houses. Most are not the cause, and most of them are worth keeping.
Show us the line first. If the camera shows the pipe failing at a joint, mending the joint settles it for the next owner of the house too.
Slow drains in spring? Let us look first.
The camera visit shows what the roots are doing, and what each option would cost you in lawn and time.