If your home has ever greeted you with a whiff of something foul, sewer-like, or straight-up rotten coming from a drain, that smell is…unpleasant!!
But it’s your plumbing sending you a message, and summer has a way of making it louder.
The good news is that most sewer smells trace back to a handful of common, fixable causes. The better news is that some of them you can solve yourself in about two minutes. Here’s how to decode what your nose is picking up on.
The dried-out drain trap
This is the single most common cause, and it’s especially common in summer. Every drain in your home has a curved section of pipe beneath it called a P-trap, which is designed to hold a small amount of water at all times. That water forms a seal that blocks sewer gas from rising up out of the pipe and into your home.
When a drain goes unused for a while (a guest bathroom, a basement floor drain, a laundry sink), the water in that trap slowly evaporates. Summer heat speeds that evaporation right up. Once the trap dries out, there’s nothing stopping sewer gas from drifting into your home. The fix is almost comically simple: run the water for a minute or pour a couple cups of water down the drain to refill the trap. Problem usually solved.
Buildup inside the pipes
Sometimes the smell comes from the drain itself rather than from sewer gas.
Over time, food, grease, hair, soap, and other gunk coat the inside of your drainpipes, and that organic buildup starts to decay and smell. Kitchen sinks and garbage disposals are frequent offenders, especially after a summer of cookouts sending extra grease and food scraps down the drain. If the smell is coming specifically from one drain and refilling the trap didn’t help, buildup is the likely culprit, and a professional drain clearing removes it far more thoroughly than store-bought products.
A problem with the vent system
Your plumbing has vent pipes that run up through your roof, letting sewer gases escape harmlessly into the air outside and helping everything drain smoothly. When one of those vents gets blocked, by a bird’s nest, leaves, or other debris, the gases can’t escape the right way and may push back into your home instead.
Signs of a vent issue include gurgling drains, slow drainage across multiple fixtures, and sewer smells that don’t go away no matter how much you clean. This one’s worth having a professional look at, since the vents involve your roof and the whole drainage system.
A deeper sewer line issue
If the smell is persistent, strong, and seems to come from multiple drains at once, the problem may be further down the line.
A cracked or damaged sewer line, a clog deep in the main, or tree roots that have worked their way into the pipe can all cause sewer odors to back up into the house. These are the more serious causes, and they usually come with other symptoms like multiple slow drains, gurgling toilets, or even patches of unusually lush grass in the yard. A camera inspection of the line is the way to know for sure what’s going on down there.
When to call for help
A dried-out trap you can handle yourself. But if you’ve refilled the traps, cleaned the obvious spots, and the smell persists, or if it’s coming from several drains at once, that’s your sign to bring in a professional before a small issue becomes a big one.
A lingering sewer smell is never something to just live with or cover up with air freshener. It’s your plumbing telling you something needs attention. Call us at (919) 853-7910 or schedule online, and we’ll track down the source and clear the air for good.