My team at Rocketman Plumbing specializes in fast repairs done right. We handle plumbing, heating, and cooling to keep your home or business running comfortably. Today, I want to talk about why you should call a plumber if you have a persistent bad sewer gas smell in your home. Maybe you’ve noticed that “Oh, it smells bad this morning,” and then it goes away for a while, and then it comes back again. This is a sign that you have a plumbing problem that needs to be fixed.
You Might Have a Defective P-Trap
All your fixtures in your house (your bathtubs, your showers, your sinks, your washing machine, and even your toilet) have built-in P-traps. This is a p-shaped pipe that drains water from your fixtures to your sewer system. The main purpose of a P-trap is to cause a water barrier. The water comes in, it sits in the bend of the P-trap, and then it goes out the drain. That bit of water that stays in the bend creates a barrier that stops sewer gas from coming up your sewer lines and into your house.
A big reason why you might smell sewer gas is if you have a defective P-trap in one of your fixtures. This happens the most in showers or bathtubs because they’re not accessible. You can’t see if you get a crack or a leak in one of them, and so you won’t notice it’s broken until the water leaks out of the P-trap and the gas comes back up. A toilet, on the other hand, does not have a P-trap beneath it. Instead, the P-trap is built-in. So if you have a little leak in your toilet, you may be able to see it; but even if you don’t, you’ll certainly notice the sewer gas smell.
You Might Have a Backed-Up Sewer Line
If you have had a backup on your sewer line, it causes the sewage and water to sit in the sewer line. When it starts to slowly drain out, that can create suction in your sewer line. The suction is strong enough that it can actually suck the water out of your P-traps. This removes the water barrier mentioned above and lets sewer gas back up your pipes. So, if you’ve had a backup problem, and now you have a bad smell, that’s usually caused by suction force draining your P-traps.
You Might Have a Crack in Your Vents
If you have a constant bad smell that just never goes away, you might have a crack in your ventilation inside a wall. If we cannot find the cause of the bad smell, we go up on your roof and do a smoke bomb test. This means we put smoke down your vents, plug them up, and then look inside the house for any smoke. If there’s no vent problems and no sewer line problems, you will not get any smoke in the house. But if there is a problem, you will. Then it’s just a matter of detecting where exactly the problem is, which is usually in a wall. Once we determine where the problem is, we can cut open that wall and repair the section of the vent pipe that has a leak.
Call Rocketman for Relief from Persistent Sewer Gas
Give us a call if you’re dealing with a persistent bad smell in your house. We’ll come take a look at your plumbing, find out where the smell is coming from, and handle the sewer line repairs so your home can be fresh again. Call us at 505-375-6602 to schedule your appointment today and we’ll be there in a flash.