Sewage backup in the house: safety first, then who to call

Sewage in the house is the one plumbing problem where the water itself is the hazard. Whatever pushed it up a shower drain or a floor drain is a plumbing job, and a plumber can fix it. What is on your floor right now is a health job, and the order you do things in matters more than speed.

This guide is that order: stop the water, protect the people in the house, figure out whose line it is, document it, then bring in a plumber for the line and a remediation company for anything beyond a small area.

Stop the water first

Every drain in the house feeds the same main line, and that line is blocked or full. Anything you send down now comes back up through the lowest opening in the house.

• No flushing, no showers, no sinks, no dishwasher, no laundry. Tell everyone in the house. The washing machine is the one people forget.
• If a toilet is still rising, lift the tank lid and push the flapper closed with your hand, then close the supply valve behind the toilet.
• Do not pour drain cleaner. It will not clear a main line, and it turns the standing water into a chemical hazard for the plumber and the cleanup crew.

Keep people and pets out, and protect yourself

Sewage carries bacteria, viruses, and parasites, and in Florida it sits at 80 degrees while you deal with it. Treat the affected room as off limits.

• Close the door. Keep children and pets out. Pets walk through it and carry it through the house.
• Gloves, boots, and eye protection for anyone who goes in. Rubber gloves, not the thin disposable kind, and shoes you can hose off.
• Ventilate with an open window, not fans. A box fan pointed at raw sewage lifts it into the air as droplets and sends it through the house by way of the air conditioning return. Save the fans for after the surface is disinfected.
• Turn off the air handler if the wet area shares a return with the rest of the house, and keep it off until the room is cleaned.
• Power. If sewage has reached an outlet, a power strip, or the base of the water heater, turn off the breaker for that room from a dry spot, or stay out and call the electric utility.
• Wash your hands every time you leave the room, and keep clothes and towels that touched it out of the rest of the house.

Whose line is it: yours, the utility’s, or the septic tank

Two minutes outside tell you who to call.

• Find the cleanout. Most homes here have a capped pipe, three or four inches across, at grade near the front or side of the house. Stand to the side, unscrew the cap if it comes off by hand, and look. Water standing in it means the blockage is between the cleanout and the street or the septic tank. A dry cleanout with the house backing up means the blockage is under the house.
• Look at the neighbors. If several houses on the street are backing up at once, or water is coming out of a manhole at the curb, the utility’s sewer main is surcharged. That is the utility’s emergency line; Lee County, Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, and Collier County each run their own. Heavy rain in hurricane season is when this happens most.
• On septic? Lehigh Acres, Alva, Buckingham, parts of eastern Estero and North Fort Myers, and much of the older county are on septic tanks. A backup at every fixture with no clog to find is often a full tank or a saturated drain field, especially after weeks of summer rain. The plumber can tell you which; the tank itself is pumped by a septic company.

If it is only your house and the cleanout is full, it is your line, and a plumber is who you need.

Document it for the insurance claim

Do this before anything is cleaned or moved.

1. Photograph and video every affected room, wide and close. Include the cleanout, the drain it came from, and the water line on walls and cabinets.
2. List what got wet: flooring, baseboards, drywall, cabinets, furniture, rugs, belongings.
3. Keep every receipt from this point on: the plumber, the cleanup company, supplies, a hotel if you have to leave.
4. Call your insurer. Many Florida policies cover sewer backup only through a separate endorsement. Let the adjuster tell you what is covered rather than assuming.

Cleanup: a small area versus the whole room

A small spill on tile, a few square feet of mostly clear water from a single toilet overflow, is something a careful homeowner can handle with gloves, paper towels into a bag, hot soapy water, and a disinfectant left on for as long as the label says.

Anything more is a job for a water damage remediation company, for good reasons:

• It soaked into something. Carpet, carpet pad, the bottom of drywall, the toe kick under cabinets, and laminate flooring all wick sewage up and hold it. Those materials come out; they do not get cleaned.
• It got under the flooring. On a slab, sewage that ran under tile or laminate sits there in the dark and grows.
• It touched the air handler or the ducts, or it sat for hours in Florida heat. Either one is a mold problem within days.

A remediation company removes what cannot be cleaned, disinfects what can, dries the room with commercial equipment, and checks the moisture before anything is closed up. Ask for documentation of the drying; your insurer may want it.

What the plumber does

Our part is the line. Open the cleanout, clear the blockage with a cable machine for roots and soft blockages or a high-velocity jetter for grease and packed lines, and get the house draining. Then run a camera through the line to find out why: ficus and palm roots at a joint, a collapsed section of cast iron in a pre-1975 home, a belly holding water, a wad of wipes, or a full septic tank, each of which leads to a different repair.

Once the line is open the cleanup can start, and the two jobs do not wait on each other. If sewage is in your house right now, stop the water, close the door, and call. A plumber answers 24 hours a day.