We frequently have customers asking us about bad smells coming from their drains. For many, they’re worried that the smell is a sign of an impending backup. These customers are wary because, in many cases, those customers have recently had a backup already.
If you are one of these customers, to start off, we are going to put your mind at ease: bad smells coming from your drains are usually not a sign of a backup. However, it still isn’t normal for your drains to smell bad. So, let’s discuss how your drain works and then identify why a smell would develop after a backup.
Your main drains work like a waterslide, angled down and away from your house, pulling waste and water into your municipal sewer system. As toilets are flushed or water goes down the drain, it flows into the main drain. That water and waste doesn’t fill the pipe, however. It runs along the bottom half of the pipe, allowing room for displaced air in the top half of the pipe.
Now, let’s go back in time to when your backup occurred. You had a blockage in your pipes that caused it to stop draining properly. In that case, sewage backed up, filling your pipes, and coating them all over with waste and sludge. If you had the blockage cleared, the water and waste in your pipes would then start flowing normally again, washing away the bottom half of your pipes. However, all that sewage is still coating the top half of your pipes and not getting washed away.
It’s this residue that is the likely culprit for all of your bad smells. As the displaced air rushes out of your drains as your sewage goes down, it brings all the odors from the stagnant sewage left clinging to the insides of your pipes.
This issue can be solved one of two ways. If your pipes smell because there is sewage trapped in the P-trap, this can be cleaned yourself as a fairly easy DIY project. It requires few tools and only takes a few minutes. However, if the smells are coming from a difficult-to-access drain like your shower or laundry room floor drain, you’ll want to talk to your plumber or drain technician about hydrojetting.
Hydrojetting works exactly the way it sounds: your drain technician sends a hose down your drain, fitted with high-powered jets on a multi-directional nozzle. This jet washes your pipes from the inside out, clearing all the sludge and sewage from the insides of your pipes--and washing the smell away with it.
If you have a bad smell coming from your drains, talk to a drain technician you trust about hydrojetting. It could be the difference between living with odors or not!
