As a homeowner, you might find it easy to handle minor home repairs on your own. However, some jobs are best left to the professionals. Discover why DIY drain cleaning can do more harm than good to your home in Cleveland, OH.
Damage to Your Pipes
When you attempt to clean out your house’s drains on your own, you could inadvertently damage the pipes. For example, drain cleaning chemicals you buy at the store can corrode your pipes. Likewise, if you don’t know how to use a tool like a plunger or snake, you could create damage such as a crack or hole in your plumbing.
High Repair Costs
Repairing those issues can take a toll on your household budget. You might have to spend more on repairing holes, cracks, and other damages that you inflicted. Compared to the price of repairing or replacing damaged pipes, you can spend far less on hiring one of our plumbers to clean out your drains.
Safety
Further, plumbing chemicals can injure you if you don’t know how to properly use them. You could splash the drain cleaning solution in your eyes or on your skin. You could suffer chemical burns that require medical treatment.
Even more, mixing certain chemicals like ammonia and bleach can create noxious fumes. These fumes can make you sick and also lower the air quality inside of your home. Rather than risk your safety, you can outsource this job to our plumbing professionals.
Ineffective Cleaning Solutions
The drain cleaning solutions you buy at the store can prove ineffective against large and tough clogs. They may be able to break up small clogs consisting of food particles. However, they often can’t break up clogs made of fibrous materials or compacted grease.
Accurate Diagnosis
You may not be able to tell where the clog is just by looking down your drain. You may also have no idea what’s causing it.
Our plumbing team can provide you with an accurate diagnosis of where the clog is. They can also tell you what the clog is made of and what it will take to pull or flush it out.
Complete Cleaning
Despite your best attempts, you could leave behind debris like grease and food that can continue clogging your drain. You might believe you removed all of the grime down inside of it. The belief that you got everything out of the drain can give you a false sense of security that you completely resolved the issue.
However, anything left behind can reform a larger and tougher clog. It can also take more time and effort to clean out the drains thoroughly.
Foul Smells
When you leave behind residue in the drain, you put your home at risk of foul smells. The food, grease, and other grime in it can rot and make your house smell bad. The smell might permeate into other parts of your home and overpower room sprays and carpet deodorizer.
Environmental Friendliness
Some store-bought plumbing chemicals aren’t environmentally friendly. Using them can contaminate the local water supply and harm the environment.
Today’s plumbing industry increasingly relies on resources and cleaning solutions that are ecologically safe. You can minimize any damage to the water, air, and soil around your home by hiring one of our plumbers to clean your drains.
Overuse of Water
In your bid to clean your home’s drains, you might use an excessive amount of water. You may have to run the water repeatedly to flush out residue inside the drain. This excessive use can increase your monthly water bill in Cleveland and make your home less efficient.
Rather than waste water, you can opt for a service like hydro jetting that will flush out the clog. This service can also use less water than your DIY drain cleaning efforts.
Warranty Voidance
Warranties on plumbing fixtures like toilets and drains often require homeowners to hire professional plumbers for repairs and cleaning. If you try to do any DIY cleaning of your home’s drains, you could void any warranties you have on them. A voided warranty would then leave you liable for any plumbing repairs or replacements.
Lack of Service Guarantee
When you clean your own drains, you miss out on a cost-effective customer satisfaction guarantee that our team at Anderson Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric can provide. This type of guarantee can instill confidence in the quality of drain cleaning our plumbers offer. It can also lower your liability for repairs and replacements that result from either manufacturer defects or the service we provide.
Water Damage Risk
Your DIY attempts to clean your drains can put your home at risk of water damage. If you cause a pipe to burst, for example, water can spray everywhere, soaking your carpet, plywood, and drywall.
Likewise, standing water can spill over the side of the tub or sink and onto your floor. Along with paying for costly pipe damage repairs, you may also have to spend hundreds of dollars or more on repairing or replacing water-damaged flooring, walls, and ceilings.
Plumbing System Disruption
The damage you accidentally cause can also take your plumbing system out of commission for several hours or longer. You may be unable to flush the toilet, take a shower or bath, or do laundry. You must wait for the completion of the professional repairs to use some or all of your plumbing system again.
Septic System Damage
Chemicals that you buy at the store and use to clean your drains can damage your septic system. They can kill beneficial bacteria in your tank, which in turn slows down or halts the breakdown of waste in your septic system.
Tree Root Growth
When you find yourself having to plunge your drains over and over again, the problem could indicate you have tree roots growing into your septic line. Tree roots can cause significant damage to your pipes. They can also prevent water from draining normally.
Tree root growth calls for services from a professional plumber to clear the roots out with special tools. The project might call for digging up the affected part of your plumbing system and laying new pipes to restore your drains’ normal function.
Time-Consuming
Trying to clean your home’s drains on your own can take more time than you anticipated. You might find yourself spending several hours trying in vain to remove whatever is causing the clog. Rather than waste your time trying to clean out the drains on your own, you can speed up the process by outsourcing this job to one of the plumbers from Anderson Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric.
Longer-Lasting Results
Professional drain cleaning can provide you with longer-lasting results than your DIY efforts. You could continue to use the drains for a year or longer. You may even find it helpful to have your drains professionally cleaned at least once a year to prevent issues such as clogs and foul smells.
Rely on Us for Drain Cleaning
At Anderson Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric, we have more than 40 years of experience providing customers in the Cleveland area with reliable drain and sewer services. Our plumbing professionals work on all types of plumbing fixtures, such as bathroom drains, garbage disposals, and septic systems. We offer a 24-hour service guarantee and will leave your plumbing system better than we found it.
Contact Anderson Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric for professional drain cleaning in Cleveland today.
