Sewer and water lines, from the house to the street.

If every drain in the house is slow, or the tub backs up when the washer drains, the trouble is past your fixtures and out in the main sewer line. That’s the one pipe that carries everything from the house to the city sewer main, or to the septic tank.

Who’s responsible for what

The City of Huntsville says the sewer service line from your house to the main is the customer’s responsibility. On the water side, Huntsville Utilities is responsible up to the meter, and the line from the meter to the house is yours. Other cities around here usually work the same way, but check with your utility.

So a sewer line full of roots under your front yard, or a leak in the water line halfway to the meter, is a homeowner repair.

What goes wrong in a sewer line

Start with roots. Roots go after joints and hairline cracks that leak a little moisture. They grow in, and the root mass catches paper until the line stops.

A belly is a section that’s sagged as the soil settled under it. It holds a puddle of water and waste all the time, and the line clogs at that same spot over and over.

Joints shift and crack, too. Older lines were laid in short pieces, and every joint is a place for the pipe to pull apart.

Material matters. A lot of houses from Huntsville’s fast growth in the 1950s and 60s have cast iron drains, and cast iron rusts from the inside, often cracking along the bottom where the water runs. Clay sewer pipe from the same era has a joint every few feet, which is exactly what roots are looking for. Our post on cast iron drain pipes covers what the rust-through looks like.

Camera inspections

We run a waterproof camera on a cable through the cleanout and down the line. It shows what’s actually in there, whether it’s roots, a break, a sag, or a pile of wipes, and roughly where it sits. Then you know what you’re paying to fix, and where.

If you’re buying an older house, a sewer camera inspection before closing is money well spent. A standard home inspection usually doesn’t look inside the sewer line, and a broken one is an expensive surprise in your first month. There’s more on that in our list of plumbing checks before buying a house.

Repair or replace?

Cutting roots out of a cracked line buys you time, and the roots will be back.

When the damage is in one spot and the rest of the line looks sound on camera, a spot repair digs down at the break and replaces that section. When the line is failing along its length, replacing the whole run is usually the better use of your money. What’s above the pipe changes the job and the price a lot. Open lawn is one thing. A driveway, a patio, or a big oak sitting on top of it is another.

When you call, tell us what’s backing up, where, and whether you know where your cleanout is.

Homes on septic

Plenty of homes in rural Limestone and Madison counties are on septic instead of city sewer. We handle the line from the house to the tank. Pumping the tank and work on the drain field belong to a septic company. If the tank is full, no amount of snaking will fix a backup, so tell us you’re on septic when you call.

Water service lines

The buried line from the meter to your house can leak for a long time before anything shows. Signs include a soggy strip in the yard when it hasn’t rained, grass that stays greener along one line, pressure that’s dropped off, and a meter that keeps moving with the main valve at the house shut. Our leak detection page covers how to test for it.

Older service lines are often galvanized steel that’s rusted nearly shut, or polybutylene, a flexible plastic pipe that went into a lot of homes from about 1978 to 1995. Either one is a good reason to replace the whole line instead of patching it.