I capped the cleanout, poured a bucket of water down every drain to test, and breathed for the first time in three hours.
I rented a drain auger (snake) from the hardware store—a 100-foot heavy-duty one with a corkscrew tip. A hand-crank snake is fine for a sink, but for a 4-inch sewer line? You need power. I fed the cable into the cleanout, cranked the handle, and felt it slither 30 feet until… thunk . The cable stopped dead. how to clear a clogged sewer line
I ran upstairs and flushed the toilet. This time, instead of gurgling, the water roared through the pipes and vanished. No backup. No smell. I capped the cleanout, poured a bucket of
I ran to the street and popped the cap off the cleanout —that white PVC pipe sticking out of the ground near the foundation. When I unscrewed the lid, dark water rose to the rim but didn’t overflow. Good. That meant the clog was downstream, between the house and the city main. If water had spewed out like a volcano, the clog would be inside the house—a much harder fix. You need power