Your sewer line is a critical part of your plumbing system. Buried beneath your slab and traveling underground to the municipal sewer main, this all-important pipe routes waste away from your home. When it has cracks, offset sections, or clogs, it can send sewage or wastewater back into your home. Damaged sewer pipes can also cause soil contamination, standing pools of raw sewage, and other serious issues. Fortunately, you can identify problems within your sewer line by these tell-tale odors.
Rotten Sewer Gas Odors
All drains throughout your home have P-traps. These often U-shaped pipe sections hold modest amounts of water. This water acts as a seal to keep sewer gases out of the house. When a P-trap dries out, the drain that it protects has a distinctive rotten egg smell.
People often describe sewer gas as smelling like rotten eggs or rotten cabbage. It’s pungent and difficult to ignore. If you have just one or two drains in your home that smell like sewer gas, you may have a localized plumbing issue. However, if every drain smells rotten, the problem likely lies within your sewer line.
When pipe damage lies beneath your home’s slab, you might smell sewer gas in your crawlspaces, basement, or other low-lying areas. If your sewer pipe has cracks or offset sections just beneath the soil in your yard, you’ll catch a whiff of sewer gas outdoors.
Rank, Musty Odors
Among the most common signs of a clogged sewer line and an impending whole-house backup are multi-drain issues. These include multiple drain clogs, multiple foul-smelling drains, and multiple slow-moving drains. These drain problems constantly add moisture to the indoor air. As trapped wastewater in your drain pipes evaporates, your indoor humidity rises.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), increased indoor moisture can cause widespread mold problems within just 48 hours. As per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whenever indoor humidity rises above 60%, mold forms.
If you have a clogged sewer line, you might see visible patches of mold and mildew on your drywall, windowsills, and other indoor surfaces. You’ll also smell the deep, musty odor that these growths emit as they flourish and spread.
Fetid Water
Movement cleans water via friction. Stagnation allows odor-causing germs in water to breed and form foul-smelling biofilms. Even if you don’t have pooling water in your plumbing fixtures or on your floors, stagnant water in your pipes will eventually fill your home with unpleasant odors.
If you catch a whiff of fetid water when standing over or passing by your drains, you could have stagnant water deep within your pipes. You might have a full or partial obstruction in your sewer line. Fetid water smells can also indicate pipe cracks that are depositing water behind your drywall or in other inconspicuous areas.
Foul smells are an early indication of sewer line troubles. With fast action, you can prevent problems within your sewer pipe from causing serious property damage. For expert sewer repair service in Yuma, AZ, contact PHD Plumbing today.