Does Your Home Need Professional Drain Cleaning?

Owning a home is a major investment for most of us. Taking care of your investment can sometimes be a challenge. We can all see walls that need painting and things that need repair, but what about the things we don’t see?

One of the most important parts of a home is its pipes. They bring healthy, fresh water into our homes and remove waste products.

These waste removal pipes are the repositories for a wide variety of clog-related things in most properties. Everything from accidentally dropped jewelry to hair can be found in our house pipes.

Bathroom Clogs

Hair tops the list of the clogs found in shower and bathroom sink drains. When hair clogs your drains, the water flows out slowly and even backs up into the sink sometimes.

Soap can also be a problem for drains if it has a high fat content. The kinder and gentler soaps often use various oils to give your skin that smooth, non-flakey look, but the oils can build up inside your pipes too.

Another issue in bathroom drains will be the various paper products, everything from feminine hygiene products to toilet paper. Tampons and feminine cleansing tissues need to be disposed in the trash rather than in the toilet.

Some people even flush paper diapers in their toilets. Depending on the flow of the water from the tank, these items can get stuck and cause drainage issues. Paper of all sorts can then build up around these products and cause major clogs that interfere with flushing.

Most toilet paper is designed to disintegrate and flush away easily. The fluffier, heavier ply toilet paper is great for it’s’ purpose, but it does not always degrade as quickly as the lower ply toilet tissues in toilet systems. That nice, soft, fluffy, heavy toilet paper can sometimes result in clogs.

Households with young children often find that the children love to see if their toys can swim in the toilet bowl. The toys also often get accidentally flushed, causing clogs that require professional drain cleaning.

Our plumbers report that they have found things in people’s toilets that are quite strange. In reality, especially in smaller bathrooms, most anything can fall in the toilet and be irretrievable.

People have also been known to deliberately flush unusual things down their bathroom toilets such as used cat litter, false teeth, drugs or pot in plastic baggies, and medical syringes. Occasionally even small animals have been known to get down the vent pipe and get stuck in toilets.

Problems That Can Occur in Kitchens

In the kitchen, the most common culprit in clogged drains is grease from pots and pans as well as dishes.

Grease looks so harmless when it is hot that many people just pour it down the drain, often turning on the kitchen sink’s disposal unit and hot water to help it move through the drainage system.

But most people never allow enough time with the hot water running to fully rinse the grease through their system.

When grease cools, it turns solid white and some or all of it adheres to your pipes. Buildup over time can cause can cause major clogs in your pipes.

Another major clogging problem in kitchen sinks is food particles. No matter how small the food particles are ground up by garbage disposals, they often adhere to the grease and other things lining your pipes.

Structural Problems That Can Lead to Clogged Drains

Broken Pipes

Blocked drains can also be caused by broken pipes. When a pipe is broken, water cannot flow freely through it. When this happens, pipes may collapse, causing the drains to become blocked.

Tree roots also can be a major cause of underground broken pipes. As wonderful as those shade trees by your house are, they sometimes put their roots where you definitely do not want them – in your pipes.

Serious broken pipes that take water away from your home sometimes require repairing using trenchless sewer replacement techniques.

Incorrectly Installed Pipes

Sometimes, in an effort to save money on plumbing services, people will install their own fixtures and drainage pipes. Poorly installed pipes can become misaligned and can even collapse completely. Incorrectly installed pipes can also cause a buildup of debris that causes blocked drains. They can even damage your plumbing system.

The Solution: Do It Yourself or Get a Professional Drain Cleaning Service

As you can see, drains become clogged or blocked for a wide variety of reasons. Some blockages build up over time and others happen quickly. While minor blockages can be cleared by a plunger, it is important to hire a professional to deal with the underlying causes.

None of the products on the market today that are advertised to clear clogs and clean your home’s pipes can offer you the professional solutions that drain cleaning services can offer.

You need to know when the over the counter drain cleaners might be helpful and when to call for professional drain cleaning and repair. There are some early warning signs that you might have obstructions in your plumbing system such as:

1. Your toilet gurgles after you flush it.
2. Bath or kitchen sink water drains too slowly.
3. There are unpleasant odors coming from sinks and drains.

Minor clogs that do not recur can often be handled by the homeowner. But clogs that recur over and over and make drains flow slowly or toilet flush incompletely definitely require professional attention.

When you use a service for professional drain cleaning, you can be assured they will get to the root of your problem and fix it correctly. Some people even choose to have their plumbing fully inspected every so many years to avoid problems.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing® of Wilmington DE uses a patented system to unclog your pipes, removing all of the sludge from the pipes in your home. After this treatment, your pipes will be so clean that future dirt and sludge would not dream of sticking around to clog your pipes.

They treat all their customers with respect and consideration by being on time for their appointments. They do the job right the first time, so no call backs are necessary, and that is so very important to those of us who have had shoddy work done that had to be redone.

Consider inviting Benjamin Franklin Plumbing® of Wilmington DE to your home – your pipes will thank you!