Drain maintenance for New Mexico homeowners

Most drain maintenance advice online is written for anywhere. San Juan County has two specific conditions that change what is worth doing: the water is hard, and the older neighbourhoods have very large trees sitting on top of clay sewer laterals.

What actually helps

1. 1Hot water after grease-heavy cooking. Not a cure, but it moves warm fat further along instead of letting it set in the trap.
2. 2Strainers in every sink and shower. Hair and food scraps are the two things you can stop at the surface for a few dollars.
3. 3Run water in fixtures you rarely use. Guest bathrooms and floor drains have traps that evaporate dry, which lets sewer gas back into the house.
4. 4Enzyme treatments, monthly, on kitchen lines. These are bacterial rather than caustic — slow, but they genuinely digest organic build-up and they will not attack your pipe.
5. 5Deal with a slow drain while it is slow. Slow is cheap. Blocked is not.

What is mostly a waste of money

• Caustic chemical drain cleaner as routine maintenance. It damages pipe and gaskets over time and does nothing about roots or scale.
• Anything claiming to dissolve tree roots on a schedule. Root foaming products have their place under professional use; the consumer versions rarely reach the actual intrusion.
• Drop-in toilet tablets with bleach. They degrade the flapper and other rubber parts, and a leaking flapper wastes more water than the tablet ever saves.

The hard-water problem

Mineral scale builds inside pipes here the way it builds inside a kettle. In a drain line it creates a rough interior surface, and rough surfaces catch everything that passes. This is gradual — years, not months — and it is why a house that never had drain trouble starts having it in its third decade.

A water softener helps your fixtures and appliances a great deal. It does nothing about scale already inside the drain line. Removing that is a jetting job.

The tree problem

Cottonwoods, elms and Siberian elms have aggressive root systems and they are drawn to the moisture and nutrients around a sewer lateral. On a clay-tile line with mortar joints, they find the joints. Once in, they form a mat that catches paper and grease.

A seasonal checklist

• Spring — root growth season. The right time for a camera check if you have mature trees over the line
• Summer — before any long trip, see the vacation checklist. Dry traps and unattended leaks are the summer issues
• Autumn — kitchen load goes up with the cooking season. Good time for an enzyme treatment on kitchen lines
• Winter — exposed and unheated-space pipes. Keep cabinet doors open on very cold nights so warm air reaches the plumbing