Most blocked drains in an Aurora home are the everyday kind, a slow kitchen sink or a backed-up tub, and those come down to what goes down them: grease and food scraps in the kitchen, hair and soap in the bathroom, and so-called flushable wipes that never really break down. Aurora’s hard water adds to it, since scale builds up on the inside of the pipe over time and gives that gunk more to cling to.
When the problem is bigger, and more than one drain slows down or backs up at the same time, that points to your main sewer line. Out there, the top cause is tree roots. Aurora’s expansive bentonite clay soil is a big reason why. It swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and that constant push and pull works older pipe joints apart, which gives roots the tiny gap they need to slip in. A yearly drain cleaning is how most Aurora homes stay ahead of it.
How to prevent drains from getting clogged?
Prevention starts at the sink and the toilet. What you keep out of your drains matters more than anything else.
- Never pour grease or cooking oil down the drain. It cools and hardens on the pipe walls. Let it cool in a can and toss it in the trash.
- Flush only toilet paper. Wipes, paper towels, and hygiene products do not break down and snag on rough spots inside the pipe.
- Keep coffee grounds, eggshells, and fibrous food scraps out of the disposal.
- Run hot water after big kitchen jobs to move soap and grease along.
Those habits handle the inside of the house. The bigger Aurora threat, tree roots, needs a different move. If you have mature trees near your sewer line and a home built before the mid-1980s, put your line on a regular cleaning and camera-inspection schedule. Roots grow back after every cleaning, so a set schedule keeps them from taking the line back between visits. When buildup is heavy, high-pressure hydro jetting scours the pipe walls clean and resets you to a fresh start.
Can blocked drains cause flooding?
Yes. A blocked main line is one of the most common ways an Aurora basement floods. When the main sewer line clogs, wastewater has nowhere to go, so it backs up and comes out the lowest opening in the house. In most homes, that is the basement floor drain. This is why one clog can turn into standing sewage on your basement floor.
Aurora’s clay soil and freeze-thaw cycles raise the odds. A fast spring snowmelt soaks and swells the clay around your line, and the added ground pressure plus the extra water volume can push a partial clog into a full backup at the worst time. Water always finds the lowest point, and a small problem left alone gets big. Catch a slow drain early and you usually avoid the flood. If water is already backing up, our sewer repair team can find the blockage and stop the damage.
Why are all my drains clogged at the same time?
When several drains slow down or back up at once, the problem is almost never a single sink. It is your main sewer line, the one pipe every drain in the house empties into. A clog in one fixture stays in that fixture. A clog in the main affects everything upstream of it.
The pattern is easy to spot. Flush a toilet and the tub gurgles. Run the washing machine and the basement floor drain backs up. The lowest drains act up first, because that is where the backup reaches before anything else. In Aurora, the two usual causes of a main-line blockage are tree roots and years of grease and scale narrowing the pipe. This matters for your wallet too, because in Aurora the property owner owns the sewer service line from the house all the way to the city main. That whole run is yours to maintain, so when the main blocks, it is on you to clear it. A camera inspection shows exactly what is happening and where, so you are not guessing. From there, hydro jetting clears roots, grease, and scale in one pass.
What to do if you have blocked drains?
Stop adding water first. If a drain is backing up, do not keep running faucets, flushing, or starting the dishwasher, because every gallon has nowhere to go and pushes the backup further into your home. If sewage is coming up through a floor drain, shut off the water to the house.
Skip the store-bought chemical drain cleaner. In Aurora’s older cast iron and galvanized lines, those chemicals eat at pipe walls that are already thin from corrosion, and they rarely clear a real root or grease blockage anyway. A snake or hydro jetting clears the line without the damage. For a single slow sink, a plunger or a hand-crank auger can help. For multiple slow drains, gurgling, or a backup, that is a main-line problem and needs a licensed plumber with a camera and a jetter, not a bottle from the hardware store.
Slow and backing-up drains in Aurora are rarely a one-time thing. Between roots chasing our shifting clay soil and hard water leaving scale in your pipes, buildup keeps returning, which is why a set cleaning schedule beats waiting for the next basement backup. At Superior Mile High Plumbing, we handle drain cleaning in Aurora, CO by camera-scoping your line, clearing the blockage at the source, and putting your home on a plan timed to Aurora’s seasons so your drains stay clear. Ready to get ahead of it? Reach out through Superior Mile High Plumbing or call us at (303) 304-0784, and we will get you on the schedule.