Signs of a Broken Sewer Line in a San Diego Home
A sewer line in San Diego rarely fails all at once. The cast iron under a 1950s Clairemont ranch rusts for a decade before the bottom drops out. The clay lateral under a North Park bungalow lets roots in at one joint, then two, then most of them. The house tells you it's happening, in a particular order, if you know what to listen for.
The order things usually happen in
- One slow drain, usually the lowest one: a shower, a tub, or the laundry standpipe. It clears with a plunger or a bottle of something and comes back in a few weeks.
- Gurgling. A toilet that burps when the washing machine drains, or a tub drain that talks when you flush. Air is being pushed back through the traps because water can't get past something in the main line.
- Everything slow at once. When the kitchen, both baths and the laundry all back up on the same day, it isn't a hair clog. Fixture clogs are one drain. Main line clogs are all of them.
- Sewage at the lowest point. Water rising in the tub when a toilet is flushed, or coming out of the yard cleanout if the house has one. This is the emergency stage.
If you're at step one or two, you have time to get a camera in the line and make a calm decision. At step four you're calling someone tonight.
What San Diego pipes do as they fail
The signs depend on the pipe, and the pipe depends on the year the house was built.
Cast iron (inside and under the slab, most homes before about 1970). It corrodes from the inside, on the floor of the pipe where wastewater sits between flushes. The first sign is a rough, scaled interior that catches paper: recurring slow drains that a cable fixes for a month. The last sign is the bottom of the pipe gone and wastewater soaking the soil under the slab. That shows up as a damp patch on the floor, a musty smell in one room, warm spots where the leak is near a hot water line, or drain flies and cockroaches coming up from a floor drain.
Vitrified clay (the yard lateral, most homes before about 1970). Clay doesn't rust. It fails at the joints, which are three or four feet apart and were sealed with mortar or oakum that stopped sealing anything fifty years ago. Roots find them. The sign is a main line clog that comes back on a schedule, often late summer, cleared each time by a cable that pulls out a fist of white root hair. The other clay failure is an offset joint, where the expansive clay soil has moved one length of pipe against the next; that shows up as a belly that holds water and paper.
ABS (most homes after about 1970). Fails less and differently: a bad glue joint, a crushed section from a truck on the driveway, a belly where the fill under a Rancho Peñasquitos or Mira Mesa lot settled.
The outside signs
San Diego yards are dry most of the year, which makes a leaking sewer line easy to spot if you look.
- A patch of lawn that's greener than the rest, in September, when nothing else is
- A wet or spongy spot along the line between the house and the street that never dries
- A sinkhole or a dip in the lawn, driveway or sidewalk over the pipe: soil washed into a broken pipe
- A sewer smell outside, near the cleanout or along the lateral, strongest in the morning
- Rats. A broken lateral is a highway from the city main to your yard
The sewer lateral on most City of San Diego lots runs from the front of the house to the main under the street. On older lots, especially in North Park, Normal Heights and University Heights, it can run to an alley main out the back. If you don't know which, the wet spot will tell you.
Signs that get blamed on the sewer but aren't
- A single slow drain that never affects any other drain: that's the fixture's trap arm or branch line, not the main.
- A sewer smell only when a guest bathroom hasn't been used for weeks: a dry trap. Run the water.
- Gurgling only on very windy days: a blocked or undersized vent on the roof, not the lateral.
- A wet spot near the water meter rather than along the sewer's path: that's the water service line, and it will show on your water bill.
What to do at each stage
At the slow-drain and gurgling stage, book a camera inspection. It's $250–$500, recorded, and turns a guess into a picture. Most people who do this early end up with a spot repair or a maintenance plan, not a replacement.
At the everything-slow stage, stop running water, don't use the dishwasher or washer, and get the line cleared and cameraed on the same visit.
At the sewage stage: stop all water, keep kids and pets out of it, and call. Sewage on a floor is a same-day job. Once it's cleared, the camera decides what comes next, and the cost page has the ranges so the quote isn't the first number you've seen.
One thing specific to older San Diego houses
A lot of them have no exterior cleanout. Without one, clearing a backup means pulling a toilet or going down a roof vent, and every service visit costs more and takes longer. If your house was built before 1970 and you can't find a capped pipe sticking out of the ground near the front of the house, adding a two-way cleanout ($400–$1,200) is the best money you'll spend on the sewer short of fixing it. It also happens to be the first thing a buyer's inspector will ask about when you sell.
Need sewer line work in San Diego?
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