Drain Cleaning in High Point, NC

Emerywood, Johnson Street and the neighborhoods around the old downtown have homes from the 1900s through the 1930s, built with furniture and hosiery money. Many sit on crawlspaces or basements with clay laterals under oaks and maples.

Mill-era cottages on the south and east sides were built for factory workers, with shallow laterals that have been patched over the decades.

Postwar neighborhoods across the city went up from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, a period when many builders in the Piedmont used Orangeburg fiber pipe.

North High Point, toward Greensboro and the Piedmont Triad Airport, and the areas around Oak Hollow Lake grew from the 1980s onward with PVC drains.

Twice a year, the High Point Market brings around 75,000 visitors from around the world, filling short-term rentals and restaurants.

High Point's Public Services Department runs the city's sewer system and treatment plants. The owner keeps up the building sewer from the house to the public connection.

April and October bring the High Point Market, when homes across the city are rented to buyers and exhibitors for a week, often with more guests than bathrooms.

Warm-season thunderstorms saturate the Guilford and Davidson county clay, and groundwater finds its way into every cracked joint. An ice storm in January can leave crawlspace homes without heat and freeze the pipes along the foundation.

Emerywood, west of downtown, was where High Point's furniture executives built their homes in the 1910s and 1920s, on winding streets under oaks that are now enormous. The clay laterals beneath those lawns have had a century to fill with roots, and many have shifted at the joints as the red clay settled. A camera run usually shows roots at most joints and a belly or two near the street. Lining from the cleanout fixes it without digging up formal gardens and stone walls.

Furniture and hosiery companies once built rows of small houses near their plants on the south and east sides. Those cottages now belong to individual owners, but their laterals were laid quickly and repaired piecemeal for decades. Some run shallow, some cross a neighbor's yard before reaching the main, and a few were never fully mapped. When two neighbors back up together, a camera with a locator traces where the lines go.

Neighborhoods built from the late 1940s through the early 1970s often have Orangeburg, a fiber pipe soaked in coal tar that was cheap and easy to lay. Decades in wet clay have made much of it soft. It flattens into an oval, its inner wall blisters and roots grow through. Because a liner needs a firm pipe to bond to, the usual fix is bursting a new pipe through the old path or replacing the run.

Every April and October, the High Point Market fills the city with buyers, designers and exhibitors from around the world, and thousands of homes are rented for the week. A three-bedroom house may sleep eight, with everyone showering at the same hour every morning. Laterals that handle a family fine can struggle. Hosts who have the line jetted before Market and leave clear notes in the bathrooms avoid most emergencies.

On the second morning of the October Market, a host gets a call from guests in her 1950s ranch near College Drive: the basement shower is filling with gray water. The plumber clears the main from the front cleanout and runs a camera that shows fiber pipe flattened into an oval and full of paper. The host schedules bursting before the spring Market.

High Point University has more than doubled in size since 2005, and rental houses along Montlieu Avenue, College Drive and the streets around campus see heavy use. Older homes with several student tenants push hair, grease and wipes through laterals that may already have roots. Owners who jet mains every summer and leave hair catchers in each shower avoid most fall calls.

Neighborhoods around Oak Hollow Lake and north toward Greensboro were built from the 1980s onward with PVC drains and cleanouts by the driveway. The pipe rarely fails. Most calls there are about kitchen grease, hair and wipes, and occasionally roots from trees planted with the subdivision.

High Point sits on rolling red clay that soaks up water during storms and shrinks during dry spells. That cycle opens old joints, and wet clay lets rainwater seep into cracks. A lateral that's fine in a dry autumn may back up during a rainy spring.

Give your neighborhood and the home's age, whether there's a basement or crawlspace and whether a big tree sits near the sewer path. Mention whether you're hosting Market guests or renting to students, whether the trouble started after rain and where the cleanout is if you know.