Sewer and drain
Sewer lines and drains for Shreveport homes and the buildings that keep running through the repair
Root intrusion, shifted clay, and cast iron that has done its sixty years. We clear it, repair it, replace it, and keep a commercial lift station cycling while the rest of the building stays open.
Chapter 01
The trees got there first
Walk down most of the older streets in Shreveport and the same picture repeats: mature oaks planted decades before the house's cast iron or galvanized sewer line ever needed a repair, and roots that have had sixty years to look for a way in. The heavy clay soil under this part of Caddo Parish shifts with the seasons, and that shifting is what opens the joint in the first place. A root does not have to force its way through solid pipe. It just has to find the gap the clay already made.
That is why a single backup at the same cleanout, month after month, is not really a clog problem. Running a cable through it clears the immediate blockage and buys you a few weeks, sometimes a season, before the roots find their way back through the same opening. The line itself, and the joint that let them in, is the actual issue, and it is worth saying that plainly instead of sending the same truck out every few months to cut the same roots again.
Roach Plumbing & Heating crew and branded service truck, dispatched for sewer and drain calls in Shreveport
Cabling opens a hole, jetting clears the pipe
For grease and scale buildup rather than roots, we reach for the jetting rig instead of a cable. A cable head bores a channel through whatever is blocking the line and the water finds that channel, but the buildup coating the rest of the pipe wall stays where it was. High pressure water jetting runs a hose the length of the line and scours the wall back round, so the pipe is actually clear again rather than tunneled through.
We run the same jetting service on residential main lines and commercial kitchens, and the deeper detail on how it works and when it is the right call lives on our water jetting page. On a straightforward sewer and drain call, we will tell you honestly whether a cable is enough or whether the line needs the jet.
Chapter 03
Commercial: lift stations, line replacement, and what the camera settles first
Commercial sewer work is a different job than a house call, mostly because the building usually cannot stop using its plumbing while we work on it. A lift station that will not cycle, an old cast iron main under a parking lot, or a line that has backed up in the same spot on three separate service calls all get scheduled around the building staying open, not the other way around.
Before anyone digs or replaces a section of line, a camera survey settles what is actually wrong. It shows whether the trouble is a single collapsed joint that can be spot repaired, a bellied section holding standing water, or a run of pipe old enough that patching one spot just moves the next failure a few feet down the line. That footage is what decides between a repair and a replacement, not a guess from the surface.
Roach Plumbing — Louisiana State Plumbing Board license #LMP1321. USDOT 475176. Call (318) 631-4533.