24/7 Drain Cleaning & Sewer Service in Arvada, CO

Olde Town Arvada and the blocks around Grandview Avenue and Ralston Road have homes from the 1890s through the 1940s, many with basements or cellars and clay tile laterals under very old shade trees.

Most of central and south Arvada, including neighborhoods around Lamar Street, Wadsworth Boulevard and the old Apple Meadows and Lake Arbor areas, was built in the 1950s through the 1970s with full basements and clay or cast iron laterals.

West Arvada, out toward Ralston Creek, Leyden Rock, Candelas and the foothills near Highway 93, was built from the 1980s onward with PVC drains and many finished basements with ejector pumps.

The city sits between Ralston Creek and Clear Creek with a mix of clay soils and old irrigation ditches, and many older lots still have heavy tree cover from the farm and orchard era.

Arvada was once a farming town known for celery, and the old ditches and fields became neighborhoods as Denver grew west after World War II.

Sewer service in Arvada is provided by the city's utilities for much of town, with several sanitation districts covering other neighborhoods, and wastewater treated regionally by Metro Water Recovery. The homeowner owns the service line from the house to the main.

Late spring and early summer bring snowmelt, storms and the fastest root growth, so May and June are the busiest months for main line backups in older Arvada.

Winter cold, sometimes made worse by wind off the foothills, freezes drains in garages, crawlspaces and exterior basement walls.

Olde Town grew up around the railroad and Ralston Road in the late 1800s, and today its restored storefronts, restaurants and the G Line commuter rail station draw crowds every weekend. The houses around it range from Victorian cottages to 1920s bungalows and 1940s brick homes. Many have cellars or basements and clay tile laterals that run under tree lawns lined with old elms, maples and cottonwoods. Roots enter at the joints and slowly fill the pipe until a heavy laundry day or a holiday dinner pushes water back up through the basement drain.

Because these lots are small and the trees are protected by their owners and neighbors, trenchless lining or pipe bursting is often the preferred fix once the line is badly damaged.

As Denver grew after World War II, the farms and celery fields between Arvada and the city turned into neighborhoods of brick ranches and split-levels with full basements. Many were plumbed with cast iron inside the house and clay tile out to the street. After sixty or seventy years, cast iron drains under basement floors can scale and corrode, narrowing the pipe until grease and paper catch, and the clay outside picks up roots and cracks. A camera inspection tells you which problem you have.

Almost every Arvada home has a basement, and many of the older ones were finished over the years into family rooms and bedrooms. The basement floor drain is the lowest opening in the plumbing, so it is where a main line clog shows up first. A backwater valve on the main protects a finished lower level, and pouring a little water into the floor drain now and then keeps the trap from drying out and letting sewer gas in.

West of Kipling and out toward Ralston Creek, Leyden Rock, Whisper Creek and Candelas, homes from the 1980s through today have PVC drains, cleanouts near the front of the house and, often, a finished basement bathroom served by an ejector pump. Root calls are rare there. Most calls are about grease in kitchen lines, wipes in kids' bathrooms and ejector pumps that jam or wear out. Homes closer to the foothills feel colder and windier in winter, and their garage drains and laundry lines can freeze in a hard cold snap.

Just after Memorial Day, a couple in a 1962 split-level near Lamar Street notices the basement toilet gurgling and then water rising at the floor drain while the dishwasher runs. The plumber clears the main from the basement cleanout and finds roots from a large silver maple about thirty feet out. The camera shows a cracked clay joint and some scale in the cast iron under the floor. The couple decides to line the clay section and keep an eye on the cast iron.

Arvada was crisscrossed with irrigation ditches when it was a farm town, and some neighborhoods were built over filled ditch beds or on clay soil that swells and shrinks with the seasons. Settling fill and swelling clay can both move a sewer lateral, separating joints or creating a low spot where waste collects. If a line clogs again and again in the same spot, a camera inspection will show whether the pipe has moved.

Olde Town's restaurants, breweries and coffee shops sit in some of the oldest buildings in Arvada, often on sewer lines nearly as old. The strip centers along Wadsworth, Kipling and 52nd Avenue add many more kitchens. Grease interceptors pumped on schedule and regular jetting of kitchen lines keep them from backing up during busy weekends and events like the Arvada Harvest Festival.

Arvada's winters bring stretches of bitter cold, and the west side near the foothills catches strong downslope winds. Drains in garages, pipes on exterior basement walls and lines in crawlspaces under additions freeze first. Close the garage door overnight, wrap exposed pipe and let a faucet drip when the forecast drops below zero. If a drain freezes, use a hair dryer or space heater nearby, never a torch.

A sewer scope is routine in Denver-area home sales and especially worth it in Olde Town and the postwar neighborhoods. Watch the full video for roots, offsets, cracks and bellies, and ask how far the camera reached. For newer homes in west Arvada, ask about the ejector pump's age and test the alarm. A repair estimate before closing gives you leverage.

Let them know your neighborhood and the home's age, whether it has a basement bathroom or ejector pump and where the water showed up. Mention any large trees near the sewer path, whether the problem started after snowmelt or a storm and whether this has happened before.