Main Sewer Line Cleaning in Connecticut

Main sewer line cleaning clears the one pipe that carries all of the wastewater out of your home. In a typical Connecticut house that line starts at the cast iron stack in the basement, passes a sewer cleanout near the foundation wall, and leaves the house as a lateral that runs under the yard to the town sewer main or, in many rural towns, to a septic tank. When that pipe clogs, every fixture in the house is affected. Flushing a toilet pushes water into the tub, the washer floods the floor drain, and the basement starts to smell like sewage.

Store bought drain cleaner and a plunger will not reach a main line clog. The blockage is usually somewhere between the cleanout and the street, made of roots, grease, wipes, paper or scale, and often a mix. Fullerton Plumbing and Drain Cleaning carries heavy sectional cable machines with root cutting blades, hydro jetters for grease and sludge, and sewer cameras on the trucks. Our first job is to get your house draining again. Our second job is to find out why the line clogged so you are not calling us back next month.

We provide sewer cleaning and sewer drain cleaning for colonials, capes, ranches, three-deckers, condos, apartment buildings and commercial properties in all eight Connecticut counties. Fullerton is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including nights, weekends and holidays, and we dispatch the nearest available technician. You get an upfront quote before any work starts, a live camera view of your line when we inspect it, and a clean basement when we pack up. Fullerton is fully insured and has 7 years in business.

Why Main Sewer Lines Clog in Connecticut Homes

Connecticut has some of the oldest housing in the country, and many homes still drain through their original pipe. Colonials and Victorians in town centers, and three-deckers in Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury, Bridgeport and New Britain, often have cast iron stacks inside and clay or cast iron laterals outside. Clay pipe comes in short sections with a joint every few feet, and decades of frost and settling loosen those joints. Mature maples and oaks along older streets find the moisture and grow straight in. Suburban capes, ranches and split levels from the 1950s to 1970s add another problem: some were built with Orangeburg pipe, a tar paper product that slowly flattens and catches everything that passes through it.

In most Connecticut towns the property owner is responsible for the sewer lateral from the house to the town main. The Metropolitan District maintains the mains in Hartford and its member towns, and the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority does the same in New Haven, Hamden, East Haven and Woodbridge, but the pipe under your yard is yours to keep clear. Outside the cities, many homes run to a septic tank instead. Those lines still clog with grease, wipes and roots between the house and the tank, and we clean them just like a town sewer line.

What Affects the Cost of Main Sewer Line Cleaning

Several factors shape the cost of sewer line cleaning. Access matters most: a clear basement cleanout is quicker than pulling a toilet or working through a roof vent. The length of the line from the house to the street or tank, the type of blockage, and the pipe material all play a part, since heavy roots in clay take longer than a wipes clog in PVC. Night, weekend and holiday calls, and whether you add a camera inspection or hydro jetting, also change the total. You always get an upfront quote before any work starts.