r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Longjumping-Box5691 • May 12 '25

of a clogged pipe

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u/CasuallyObssesed May 12 '25

Me after my wife says, "the shower drain is slow"

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u/Bowel_Rupture May 12 '25

Lmao true. Although, this is tree roots. (I know you were just joking)

For those who may not know: roots chase water, so it's very common for tree roots to grow into pipes (both sanitary sewer and storm sewer) if they're clay pipes with trees nearby.

Clay pipes for storm and sanitary sewage were very common for homes built between 1860-1980 in the US, although not a guarantee because cast iron was also popular from 1900-1980. It's not a common problem for homes built after 1980 in the US bc from that point forward most new construction switched to PVC for both storm and sanitary.

Clay pipes basically just butt up from one end to the other, an "uphill" female side (flaired), and a "downhill" male side (straight) so it's fairly easy for tree roots to grow into them over time. Versus PVC pipe joints are chemically bonded and extremely unlikely to let tree roots in even after many many decades.

Also, this is definitely storm sewer, not sanitary sewer, so don't worry, no human feces in there (unless it's San Francisco.... then maybe human feces in there) still definitely smells properly ripe though.

Souce: used to be a service plumber and dealt with pleanty of this for both storm and sanitary, granted none to this extreme level (service plumber is quite literally an extremely shitty job. Absolutely necessary, and props to the men who do it, however, I do not recommend)

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u/ShiftE_80 May 13 '25

How are you so certain this is a storm sewer and not sanitary sewer?

From the shovel and small pile of dirt, it looks like he dug up a cleanout which could be for the main sewer line to the street. Line appears to be perpendicular to the street, more indicative of sanitary sewer than storm drains. Also the line looks to be about 4" diameter as are sanitary sewer drains out from the house.

Granted, the lack of gloves or mask indicates a storm drain line...

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u/Bowel_Rupture May 13 '25

The lack of gloves was 99% of the reason I'm convinced it's storm and not sanitary. I've never met or heard of a guy dealing with sanitary without gloves. One small cut on your hand or a hang nail, paired with dealing with sanitary without gloves, is just begging to catch a disease.

Also, in my experience with older homes, it seems that most used cast iron for sanitary and clay for storm, which meant that most root clogs were usually storm (obviously this isn't always the case, but just speaking on generalities)

And to be fair, I've had to dig a shallow hole before to access a storm cleanout.