Clean Your Drain - A Summer Thing

Your house drain is often the last thing you would think of with the coming of summer, but like changing the batteries in your smoke detector with Daylight Savings Time, you should always remember to conduct an annual drain cleaning.

Most people don't think about it until "it" backs up in the tub or shower, usually on a Friday evening, causing you to frantically search for a drain cleaner, open on Saturday, and then having to pay weekend rates.

If you are lucky enough to find someone who will come out on the weekend, and you have an outside access plug, they will uncap the pipe, insert the rotary pipe cleaner, and start feeding the cable down the drain pipe. With luck they will find the blockage, and cut through the snag.

What is a snag? Usually its a tree root attracted to your drain pipe by a small brake in the line. If the baby flushes his diaper, "Just helping Mommy," it will hang up on the root and begin backing things up until you notice something strange in the bathtub. The big rotary drain cleaner is designed to take care of such cases, but sometimes the is more to the problem.

Sometime, long ago, when the drain was installed, someone put in a 90 degree elbow instead of a sweeping, gentle elbow. If the root cutter gets that far it may get stuck and they have to cut the cable and dig up your drain. This turns a couple of hundred dollars into several thousand. Just because you didn't get your drain cleaned last summer.

Remember the TV ad, "Pay me now, or pay me later." Yearly cleaning of your drain pipe will hopefully prevent the sudden, weekend crisis. Keeping the roots out every year prevents them growing so big they clog the drain. And believe me, nobody wants that.

Is your Guelph home in need of professional drain cleaning? Call Lodder Brothers Limited at (519) 836-6370 for the best services in your area!