Slow Drains & Repeat Backups

First time in years. Clear it and move on. Most houses do this once and behave for a decade.

Twice a year, at the same times. Roots. They grow into a joint, the line silts up behind them, the first heavy rain or the holiday load tips it over. It is a maintenance pattern rather than a failure — until the interval starts closing.

Quarterly, then monthly. The interval closing is the diagnosis. Either the intrusion is now along a length of pipe rather than at one joint, or something structural is holding solids: a belly, an offset, a partial collapse. Clearing that line is renting time by the month.

After rain, specifically. Groundwater entering the line through cracks, or a lateral that has separated. It also means the problem is outside the house rather than under it.

Different animal. A tub that takes twenty minutes to empty while everything else is fine is a vent or a trap issue more often than a blockage — air has to get in for water to get out, and a blocked vent behaves exactly like a partial clog. Gurgling is the tell: a drain that gurgles when another fixture is used is telling you about air, not about an obstruction.

Kitchen lines are their own story. Decades of grease and soap narrow the pipe from the wall in, and no cable fixes that geometry; it is the textbook case for scouring rather than boring.

Signs that the conversation has moved on: repeated backups at closing intervals, a camera showing standing water in a section with no fall, roots entering all along a run, clay joints separated, Orangeburg deformed, or ground above the line that stays soft and smells. At that point money spent clearing is money spent on the calendar, and the honest options are a spot repair, a trenchless replacement or an open trench.

Published Bay Area figures for full lateral replacement run $8,000–$18,000, quoted per foot at $50–$250 for pipe work and $150–$300 all-in with restoration; trenchless methods — pipe bursting and lining — sit at $80–$250 per foot and usually win once the driveway and lawn are counted. Most replacements are a single day's work. The cost guide goes through which method suits which failure.

Two things worth checking, both free: whether you have an approved cleanout at the property line, because in San José that changes who is responsible for the section under the street; and whether anyone has ever put a camera in the line. Both change what the right next payment is.

Which fixtures, in what order, and how often — dates if you have them. The cleanout. Any soft or sunken ground along the run to the street. Old invoices, if the same line has been cleared before: what a previous plumber wrote down is evidence.