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.
The first sign was a gurgle. Not from one toilet, but all of them. When I flushed the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs shower hissed back like a warning. Then came the smell—sulfur and decay drifting up from the basement drain. how to clear a clogged sewer line
I pushed harder. Nothing. The snake was hitting a wall of solid muck. I ran upstairs and flushed the toilet
That’s when I switched tactics. A friend with a pressure washer had a —a thick rubber tube with backward-facing nozzles. We shoved it into the cleanout, turned the water on full blast, and listened. For thirty seconds, nothing happened. Then, a deep, sucking glug-glug-glug . The water level in the cleanout dropped like a drain unclogging. No smell
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.