Roots in Sewer Pipe Stop Up Toilet in New Iberia

Recently a property management company assigned us a job to clear a clog at a older rental home in New Iberia.

Fortunately there was a clean out in the back yard to access the sewer line. We first ran a cable through the clean out and got the water inside the pipe to start flowing and draining. Then we ran our high water pressure jetter just to make sure everything was flushed out of the sewer pipe.

Afterwards, we conducted a drain video camera inspection. Unfortunately, we found a large amount of roots in three different locations in the terracotta clay pipe.

The pipe ran along a narrow alley between the house and fence, which also had a large tree and lots of overgrown weeds in the alley. Whereas the property owner had no intentions of paying thousands of dollars to dig up and replace the terracotta clay pipe, the best we could recommend to the long-time tenant was to use root poison to try to kill the tree roots inside of the sewer line.

Location: New Iberia, LA