Drain Cleaning in Compton, CA

Compton's sewer code contains one flat sentence with no exceptions attached. No roof drain or surface water drain shall be connected to any sanitary sewer.

Most code provisions are conditional. This one is not. There is no permit that allows it, no size below which it is acceptable, and no grandfathering clause in the text. A downspout tied into the sewer, a yard drain plumbed into a cleanout, an area drain at the bottom of a driveway running to the house line: all prohibited, in the same sentence, without qualification.

A sanitary sewer carries what the household discharges, and a household discharges the same amount whether or not it is raining. So, a line that runs acceptably in August and backs up in February is telling you that something is adding volume it was never sized for, and one way that happens is a stormwater connection somewhere on the property.

It is a live possibility wherever a downspout or a yard drain has been routed into whatever pipe was nearest, which was ordinary practice on housing of a certain age. The practice was ordinary once, but it is now prohibited. So, the City takes an interest in it and a homeowner should too.

Two consequences follow for an owner. The first is that clearing the line addresses the symptom while leaving the cause in place, so the same appointment returns with the next storm. The second is that this is exactly the sort of thing the City's mandatory presale inspection is looking for, so a connection no one has thought about for forty years can surface as a correction item at the worst possible moment in a sale. Finding it on an ordinary drain call is much easier than finding it in a pre-sale report. Our Compton water heater flush page shows what the report costs and how long it remains valid once issued. → Water heater flush compton

The signature is timing, and timing is something a homeowner already knows without being asked. A sanitary line that has narrowed with grease or roots misbehaves on a schedule set by use: the day after a large gathering, the week the household grew, whenever the washing machine and the dishwasher run together. A line receiving stormwater follows the sky instead, and the two calendars look nothing alike once somebody thinks to compare them.

There is a second tell that is easier to observe than it sounds. A storm connection feeds the line on a completely different schedule from a household. A fixture discharges in bursts and then stops; a roof feeds continuously for as long as the rain lasts, and it does not stop because somebody went to bed. So, a line that copes with everything the house does and fails in terms of weather is not marginal in capacity for household use at all. It is being asked to do a different job. That distinction matters because it changes the recommendation: a line failing on household use may need cleaning or replacement, while a line failing only in weather usually wants the connection found and severed, after which the pipe is fine.