How often should you have your drains professionally cleaned?

Every one to two years suits most homes in San Juan County. That is the short answer, and for a reasonably modern house with normal occupancy it is the right one. The rest of this is about when it is not.

The interval, by house

• Every 1-2 years - most residential properties, modern plumbing, ordinary household size
• Every 6-12 months - older cast iron or galvanised lines, homes that have clogged more than once in a year, or large households
• Quarterly or on a schedule - restaurants, commercial kitchens and any property with a grease interceptor

Nobody needs a drain cleaned on a calendar for its own sake. The point of an interval is to clear buildup while it is still soft, because that is a routine visit rather than an emergency one.

Four things that move the number

1. 1Pipe age and material. Cast iron and galvanised steel corrode inward and catch everything that passes. Clay-tile sewer laterals, common in the older parts of Farmington and Aztec, open at the joints as the ground moves.
2. 2Tree roots. Mature cottonwoods and elms will find any crack in a lateral and keep growing. A line with root intrusion does not stay clear for two years no matter how well it is cleared.
3. 3Household size. More people is more wastewater, and kitchen drains in particular accumulate faster than anyone expects.
4. 4Water hardness. All of the Four Corners is hard water. Scale narrows older lines steadily, which is slow enough to be invisible and quick enough to matter over a decade.

Three signs you are already overdue

• The same drain has clogged twice in a year - that is a cause that was never removed, not bad luck
• More than one fixture is slow at the same time - that points at the main line, not the fixture
• A drain gurgles when something else empties, or water appears in a tub when you flush

The last two are worth acting on quickly. A main line problem does not improve on its own, and the difference between clearing one and excavating one is usually how long it was left.

What a professional visit does that a plunger does not

A cable or jet takes the buildup off the pipe wall around the full circumference rather than punching a hole through the middle of it. The camera afterwards is what tells you which of the four factors above you are actually dealing with - and therefore what your real interval is.

That is the useful part. Once you know whether you have grease, scale or roots, the schedule stops being a guess.