How to Unblock an Outdoor Drain

LESLIE: Next up, a clogged drain dilemma in Florida.

Tracy, what’s going on?

TRACY: Hey, good evening. Thank you for taking my call.

LESLIE: You’re so welcome.

TRACY: I have a drain that is clogged up. I tried to hire someone to help me with that but they were saying something about a French drain. I’m not really sure what to do at this point.

TOM: Is the drain clogged outside your house?

TRACY: Yeah. It’s right in front of the garage.

TOM: OK.

TRACY: When it rains, it takes hours to go down and even now you can still see water at the bottom of it.

TOM: OK. Well, it sounds like it’s obstructed, obviously. What you probably ought to do is call somebody like a Roto-Rooter and have a drain camera inspection done. There’s a camera that’s mounted on the end of like a snake and they can actually lower it into that pipe and move it down the line and determine if the pipe is cracked, if there’s roots that are obstructing it, or whatever the case might be. And if they find that it is broken, there are ways to repair it in place without having to trench the whole yard up.

LESLIE: Yeah, they just dig two small holes so you can fix it right away. You would never even know that they were there.

TOM: Yeah, they go up one end and then the other and they can actually reline the pipe. So you need to figure out why it’s obstructed. Obviously it’s obstructed in some way and it needs to be snaked out. While they’re there, they’ll probably try to clean it. If it doesn’t clean easily, then they’ll use the camera to figure out what’s holding it up.

TRACY: Oh, OK.

TOM: Alright, Tracy?

TRACY: Alright, then. Thank you so much.

TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.