Winter brings enough stress to homeowners and their families with icy roads and high heating bills. The last thing you want to deal with is a sewer backup in your home, as it can bring dangerous contaminants into your living environment and damage property.
When the ground freezes, the soil around your pipes shifts and expands. This can cause old or weak lines to crack or sag. Because these pipes are hidden underground, most homeowners forget about them until a sink starts gurgling or they notice a strange smell wafting through the bathroom. If you take a few simple precautions now, you can avoid a massive bill from a plumber when the weather is already at its worst.
Watch What Goes Down the Kitchen Drain
The biggest enemy of a healthy sewer line during the winter is grease. When you pour warm bacon grease or cooking oil down the sink, you may think that all is fine because it looks like a liquid that will easily go down the drain. However, it quickly turns solid once it hits the cold pipes buried in the frozen earth. Eventually, the pipe becomes completely blocked. Instead of rinsing pans in the sink, you should pour extra grease into an old coffee can and throw it in the trash once it hardens.
Be Kind to Your Toilets
The things you flush down your toilet can create significant, expensive problems in your sewer line. Only flush human waste and toilet paper. Everything else stays in the pipes and causes major trouble, as even products labeled as flushable do not dissolve.
Check on Your Tree Roots Often
Trees might look dormant during the winter, but their roots are constantly searching for moisture and nutrients found inside your sewer pipes. If your sewer line has a tiny crack, a root can wiggle its way inside and grow rapidly because the water inside is much warmer than the frozen ground outside.
Since the soil can remain frozen for months, any existing root damage can worsen as ground pressure increases. You can prevent a total collapse by having a professional run a camera through your line. You should especially do this if you notice that multiple drains in your house are running slowly simultaneously.
If you have not yet had an inspection in the past year, schedule one as soon as possible. This allows you to address problems lurking beneath the surface before they get out of hand. Call PHD Plumbing for sewer line service in Yuma, AZ.