24/7 Drain Cleaning & Sewer Service in Syracuse, NY

The University Hill area, Westcott, Strathmore and the Near Westside have homes from the 1880s through the 1920s, many large wood-frame houses converted to student rentals or apartments, with basements and clay laterals.

Eastwood, Tipp Hill, the Valley and Sedgwick were built from the 1900s through the 1940s with two-family flats, bungalows and Colonial Revivals.

Postwar neighborhoods on the city's edges and suburbs like DeWitt, Salina and Camillus have ranches and Cape Cods from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Syracuse's older neighborhoods have combined sewers, and Onondaga County's long-running Save the Rain program uses green infrastructure to keep storm water out of them.

Lake-effect snow off Lake Ontario routinely drops more than 100 inches a year, and the city sits in hills around Onondaga Lake.

Onondaga County's Department of Water Environment Protection operates the trunk sewers and the Metropolitan Syracuse treatment plant, and the city maintains local sewers. Owners of Syracuse homes are on the hook for the lateral between the house and the public sewer.

From December through March, deep cold and heavy snow freeze drains in garages, porches and shallow pipe, and the March melt floods basements and sewers.

Late spring and summer storms bring the fastest root growth and occasional sewer surcharges in combined areas.

The neighborhoods around Syracuse University, including the streets off Euclid, Ostrom and Comstock, are packed with big old wood-frame houses carved into student apartments. A single house might hold eight students, all showering, cooking and doing laundry through one clay lateral laid a century ago. Hair, grease, wipes and the occasional bottle cap cause most backups, often in the first weeks of the fall semester. Landlords who have the main jetted every summer, before keys change hands, cut down sharply on those calls.

Westcott, east of campus, and Strathmore, on the south side near Onondaga Park, are leafy neighborhoods of Arts and Crafts homes and foursquares. Big maples and oaks line the streets, and their roots have had a hundred years to find cracks in the clay laterals. Root cutting buys time, and a liner is the long-term fix.

Tipp Hill, the Irish neighborhood famous for its upside-down traffic light, and the Near Westside have two-family flats and cottages built for salt, canal and factory workers. Many homes have been in the same families for generations. Laterals there are old clay, and cast iron stacks inside are often heavily scaled.

Syracuse averages well over a hundred inches of snow, and January and February bring weeks of deep cold. Drains in attached garages, enclosed back porches and old additions over crawlspaces freeze first. Where driveways are plowed bare, frost drives deep into the ground and can freeze a shallow lateral. Keep the basement warm, insulate pipes along exterior walls and let a faucet drip on the coldest nights. If a line freezes, a plumber can thaw it with steam or warm water jetting.

When the snowpack melts, often quickly during a warm March rain, groundwater rises and pours into cracked laterals and old basement walls. Combined sewers fill up, and basements on lower ground take on water. A working sump pump, disconnected downspouts and a backwater valve all help.

Onondaga County's Save the Rain program has installed hundreds of green infrastructure projects across Syracuse, from rain gardens and porous pavement to green roofs, to keep storm water out of combined sewers. It has sharply reduced overflows into Onondaga Lake. Homeowners can help by disconnecting downspouts from the sewer.

The second week of September, six students in a 1910 house off Euclid Avenue find water rising out of the basement floor drain. The plumber opens the cleanout and pulls back hair, wipes and fine roots from a big maple about thirty feet out. On the camera, two clay joints have separated. The landlord books a liner for winter break, when the house is empty.

Eastwood, once its own village, has bungalows and colonials from the 1910s through the 1940s, and the city's edges and nearby suburbs filled in after World War II with Cape Cods and ranches. Cast iron under basement floors and clay laterals from those decades are now aging, and scale and roots are the usual findings.

Armory Square, Westcott Street and the busy corridors along Erie Boulevard serve students, hospital workers and Orange fans. On game weekends, kitchens run at full tilt, and the old lines under them carry a lot of grease. Keeping interceptors pumped and lines jetted before football and basketball seasons heads off most trouble.

Syracuse is hillier than most visitors expect, and homes on University Hill, Tipp Hill and Strathmore often sit well above the street. Steep laterals let water outrun waste, leaving deposits where the slope flattens. Jetting scours those spots better than a cable does.

Have the neighborhood, the home's approximate age and the number of people living there ready. Say whether it's a student rental, whether the trouble came during a freeze, a thaw or a storm, and whether large trees stand near the sewer path.