Chicago Plumbworks sets up sewer rodding and sewer line repair across Chicago for the pipe most owners never see. The lateral leaves your basement and crosses under the yard, the sidewalk and the parkway to the City sewer main in the street. Everything in the building drains toward it, so when it clogs, the backup shows at the lowest opening first. One sink that won’t empty while the rest drain fine is a clogged drain in that fixture, a smaller job. When the whole building backs up, the lateral is where your plumber starts.
Signs your main line is clogged
A sewer line clogged anywhere between the basement and the street shows up in more than one fixture at once:
- Water comes up the floor drain, a basement toilet or the laundry tub when the washer empties or someone showers upstairs.
- Toilets bubble or gurgle while the tub runs.
- Every fixture slows down over a few weeks, worst on the lowest floor.
- The backup returns a few months after the last rodding.
Water at the floor drain only during heavy rain, while nobody in the building is running water, isn’t a clog. It comes from the City’s combined sewer filling up, and a sewer backup that arrives with the storm needs flood control, not rodding.
In a two-flat or three-flat
Stacked units make a sewer line clog easy to misread. The upstairs unit can run water all day and notice nothing, while the garden unit’s floor drain takes the overflow. The clog is in the shared line either way, so the call is about the building, not one apartment.
Ask the tenants upstairs not to run water while the line is rodded, since anything they drain comes up on the garden-unit floor until the line opens. Arrange access to the basement and the cleanout on the same call.
Rodding first, camera second
Rodding comes first because a camera can’t see through a pipe full of sewage.
Getting into the line
The rodding starts at a cleanout, a capped opening on the sewer where it leaves the building. In an older basement that may be a fitting low on the front wall or a cap set in the floor. If there’s no cleanout, or the cap is seized, your plumber can go in through a pulled toilet or a roof vent. A cleanout still gives the straightest run to the street and the best angle for the camera afterward.
The rodding, then the footage
Your plumber feeds a cutting head in and runs it out toward the street until the line opens and the water drops. That ends the backup, but it doesn’t show why it happened.
The sewer camera inspection is the second half of the visit. A waterproof camera on a push cable travels the pipe and records the whole run, and a locator above ground marks where a problem spot is, so you know whether it’s under the yard, the sidewalk or the parkway.
The industry’s standard defect codes grade each problem the camera finds from 1 (minor) to 5 (severe), and they keep maintenance problems apart from structural ones:
- Maintenance problems: roots, grease, scale and debris. Rodding or jetting deals with these.
- Structural problems: cracks, joints that have shifted out of line, a section that’s crushed or collapsed. Cleaning doesn’t fix any of them.
Ask for the recording and keep it. You’ll want it if the problem comes back, if you sell, or if the break turns out to be under the public way.
Clay laterals and tree roots
The City’s own sewer program calls the house sewer a drain tile. A clay lateral is a string of short pipe sections set end to end under the yard, and every joint can let a little water and air escape into the soil. The camera shows whether yours is clay, cast iron or plastic, and how the joints look.
Parkway trees grow in the strip between the sidewalk and the curb, the same ground the lateral crosses to reach the street. According to the City’s Bureau of Forestry, their roots don’t break a sound pipe. Roots go after a drain that’s already leaking at an aging pipe or a faulty joint, for the water and air the leak gives off. Once they’re through the gap, they grow into a mat that catches paper and grease until the line closes.
Rodding cuts that mat off flush with the pipe wall. It doesn’t touch the joint the roots came through, so they grow back, and a clay line with roots at several joints turns into a regular rodding job. The lasting repair is made at those joints, in the pipe itself.
Common findings on the footage, and what each one usually means:
| On the footage | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Fine roots at one or two joints, pipe round and lined up | Rod on a schedule, or seal those joints |
| Heavy roots at joint after joint | The joints are failing along the run |
| Water standing in one stretch | A sag; solids settle there and build up |
| Cracks, a dropped joint or a flattened section | Structural damage that needs repair |
Spot repair or full replacement
One bad joint or one cracked section, with sound pipe on both sides, is a spot repair. Your plumber digs one hole over the spot the locator marked and replaces the bad length with new pipe. On some lines that stretch gets lined from inside instead. Ask for a second camera run afterward to confirm the line is clear end to end.
When the footage shows trouble at joint after joint, a long sag or a collapse, patching one spot leaves the rest of the run waiting to fail. At that point the pipe is past repair, and the choice is between digging a new line and replacing it trenchless.
Where the bad spot sits changes the job as much as what’s wrong with it:
- Under the yard: the simplest dig, on your side of the sidewalk.
- Under a garage slab, a gangway or a back porch: more to cut through and put back, which can make lining the better choice.
- Under the sidewalk or parkway: that’s the public way, so City permits come into it, and the parkway tree has to be protected while anyone digs near it.
Any repair on a private sewer needs a sewer permit from the City’s Department of Buildings. Ask for the price of each option in writing, so you can set the spot repair against a full replacement.
The City’s private drain program
If the camera finds the break under the public way, the City may fix that part. Under its Private Drain Program, run by the Department of Water Management, Chicago repairs sewer drain tile from homes of up to four units when the tile is proven broken under the public way. The City defines that as the area from the city sidewalk to the center of the street. The proof comes from a licensed sewer contractor, who rods or camera-inspects the line and schedules a review by a City sewer inspector. So the rodding and the camera run come first, whoever ends up fixing the break. The City’s Private Drain Repair page has the program’s current terms.
Backing up for some other reason?
Water that pools against the house and gets into the basement every storm can trace back to a full catch basin or the overhead sewer setup. A garden-unit toilet that backs up while the rest of the building drains may be an ejector pump that stopped. Sewage on the floor right now? Start with emergency plumbing and get it stopped.