Your sewer line carries everything from every drain in the house out to the city main. It's buried, so it tends to fail quietly — until it doesn't. These are the signs worth acting on.
1. More than one drain is slow. A single slow sink is a local clog. When the tub, toilet and kitchen sink are all sluggish, the restriction is in the main line they share.
2. Toilets gurgle or the tub backs up when the washer drains. Water that can't get past a blockage pushes air and wastewater back up through the lowest drains in the house.
3. The same clog keeps coming back. If a drain needs clearing every few months, something is catching debris — usually tree roots that have entered at a joint, or a section of pipe that has sagged.
4. Sewer smell indoors or in the yard. A sealed sewer line shouldn't smell. Odor means a crack or an open joint is letting sewer gas out.
5. A soggy or unusually green strip of lawn. A leaking line fertilizes and waters the soil above it. In older South Bay neighborhoods with clay or cast-iron laterals, this is common.
The way to know for sure is a camera inspection. We feed a camera through a cleanout and watch the inside of the pipe on a monitor — roots, cracks, offsets and collapsed sections are all plain to see, and we can locate exactly where they are from above ground.
From there the options are clearing the line, repairing one section, or replacing the line — often trenchless, through two small pits instead of a trench across the yard. Call Alex's Plumbing and Rooter at (408) 410-0028 to have yours inspected.