Nobody wants their house to have an unpleasant smell of any kind wafting through it. Unfortunately, problems with drains or the sewer line can end up creating awful stenches in even the cleanest home. When you detect foul smells coming up from one of more of the drains in your home, there are a number of potential causes, ranging from minor issues you can solve yourself to major troubles that can threaten your plumbing system unless you schedule professional repairs.
Dried out p-trap
If only one drain in your home is letting off odors, it may be due to a dried out p-trap. This is the curved pipe found right under the drain, usually behind cabinet doors. The shape of the pipe, when looked at from the side, resembles the letter p, which is where the name comes from. The p-trap is designed to hold an amount of water that creates a barrier against sewer gas coming back up the drainpipe. If this p-trap dries out because the drain hasn’t been used in a stretch, bad odors will start to come from it. Run water down the drain for a minute, and this should solve the problem.
Drain vent issues
Your wastewater pipes have vents in them to prevent a build-up of pressure. These vents pipes connect to a central chimney pipe that goes up to the roof. If vents become blocked, the pressure will force sewer gas up through the water in the p-trap. You might hear a gurgling sound from the drains, a sign that the gas is percolating up through the p-trap’s water. Call professional plumbers to fix the problem.
Sewer line troubles
This is the most serious of all. When you find that drains all around your home are emitting bad smells, the trouble might come from a blocked or broken sewer line. Call for our expert plumbers right away, since the sewer lines must either be repaired or replaced, and this is a major task.
Modern Plumbing Industries, Inc. in Orlando, FL offers superb drain and sewer line cleaning and repairs. We’ve served Central Florida since 1975.