April 5, 2026

Sewer line and pipes

I am actually on a septic system, so we are talking about the fairly short line from the house to the septic tank.

Two guys: Dom and Joe, from Benjamin Franklin plumbing visited 3-2-2026 to fix a clogged toilet (the bird bathroom toilet). They pulled the toilet, ran their snake down to get rid of the problem, then took the following with their camera: 

18:55 feet - video begins
12:3 feet - tee to right
8:0 feet - turn
4:0 feet - turn
2;0 feet - exit floor

Visit by Joe - 4/9/2026

Joe came by, ran his camera down the cleanout and found a mass of roots partly blocking the pipe only about 2 feet upstream from the cleanout! This would place it just under the edge of the slab that supports the swamp cooler. So it would not be totally out of the question to dig things up (at least it isn't under the house).

However it is much less work to run a powered snake up the line and chop them out. This would probably fix the problem for at least 5 years, maybe longer. They will come do this on Wednesday 4/15/2026.

Visit by Dom and Michael - 4/15/2026

They brought their big hydro-jetter machine and used the cleanout. At only 1-2 feet up was the junction to the main bathroom. About 7 feet up from the cleanout was the main root problem. They got rid of all of this (as shown by the camera).

We had a big adventure when the jetter took a wrong turn into the main bathroom and got stuck. Dom pulled the toilet (which was not a solution), but this got him to replace the valve on the wall, which was leaking and needed to be replaced. It was a challenge to do and I am glad Dom did it instead of me.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Home repair pages / tom@mmto.org