Why You Need Drain Cleaning Before Moving Into A New Home
Are you getting ready to move into a newly purchased home? Are you making a list of things that need to be done before your actual move-in date? Moving can be an extremely busy time, so you want to make sure that you remember everything important. One of the important, but often overlooked, things to do before moving into a new place is to have the drains cleaned out. While this may seem superfluous when they appear to still be in working order, there are a variety of reasons why you should have a plumber clean out and inspect your drains before you move in:
Plant roots: It's nearly impossible to tell from outside whether roots of any kind have invaded your sewer pipes. The drains may continue to flow at a relatively normal rate until one day when they stop flowing entirely. A drain cleaning now can tell you whether or not this is something that you need to be concerned about. If it is, your plumber can give you options and preventatives. There are chemicals that you can use periodically to kill off any roots that infiltrate sewer pipes, but you need to know that they're there and to use the product before the roots actually become a problem.
Foreign objects: Roots aren't the only things that can cause issues in your plumbing system. If the house's previous occupants had small children, it's possible that one or more of their small toys may now reside in the sewer line. The occupants may also have flushed things like baby wipes, cat litter, paper towels, and other things that should not go down the drain. While these things may not have caused issues at the time, they may have been building up and forming a clog in the pipe. A good drain cleaning will remove these things so that you don't have to worry about all of your drains suddenly backing up at once.
Pipe condition: Sewer pipes can be made out of a variety of materials, depending on how old the house is. Older homes may still have clay or iron pipes, while brand new homes typically use PVC pipes. And then there are houses that were built in the early 20th century that may actually have cardboard pipes. Called Orangeburg piping, these pipes were formed from a combination of asphalt or tar and wood fiber. Although surprisingly durable, they can decay rapidly once they reach their limit. A good drain cleaning can tell you what type of pipes that the house has and whether you should be concerned about your sewer line at all. To learn more about drain cleaning, visit a website like http://www.landolakesplumbing.com/.