Tips for preventing sewer backup and sewage damage disasters
Sewer systems are made to flush out wastes, solids as well as liquids, from the toilets, washing machines, basement floods and household plumbing. Sewer backups are nothing but the reversal or clogging of these waste products in the drains. They are mainly caused due to flooding, lack of proper maintenance, clogging of sewer lines and break or crack in the pipe. Here are tips on how to clear your sewer lines and maintain them in order to prevent sewage damage which can be quite a difficult and costly proposition for homeowners and business owners to clean up after. Here are the tips:
1. Do not flush cloth material or paper down the toilet. For instance, the products that you should not flush include sanitary napkins, disposable diapers, paper towels and tampons. These things after use can be wrapped in a paper bag and thrown in the dustbin.
2. Do not clog toilets and drains with cooking oil and other grease based products. Though cooking oil may be liquid, it is thick and tends to solidify after cooling, clogging the sewer line in the process and causing the sewer system to backup. You can dispose cooking oil in a heat safe pot.
3. Do not flush pesticides, motor oil, paint and other toxic liquids down the drain. All of these can lead to sewer system backups.
4. Trees and roots can clog the sewer lines. To prevent sewer system backup, you can use a rootkiller with copper sulfate as a constituent to take care of the roots of these shrubs.
5. To be on the safe side, refrain from avoiding trees, shrubs and plants close to the sewer lines. The roots can break into the sewer lines, looking for moisture and cause sewer blockage.
Some communities may make use of an overhead sewer system to eliminate sewer backup problems. In such a scenario, the waste from the home is collected in the basement floor well. This waste is then pushed up to the ground level and away from the house in a replacement sewer line. Close to the street, the replacement sewer line is drained all the way to the municipal sewer line. The water level at the road drains should not be higher than the overhead sewer pipe, if the opposite is the case; the sewer will flow back to the basement and it will become filled.
One favored method of getting rid of sewer backup problems is to remove the main sewer line near the street, and set up a valve to separate your sewer from the civic sewer lines. This removes possible pressure in the sewer lines below your house, or on the outside part of your foundation. You can install a manual cutoff valve, but that requires someone to be present at the home to close the valves if there is any issue. The automatic valve gives comprehensive protection from potential backup conditions. In both the cases, if the valve is sealed, water from the house plumbing will move back up by means of the floor drain. A pump can be fixed to push the waste water into the sewer after the automatic valve does its job.
