Why Tree Roots Wreck Kansas City Sewer Lines

If you live in one of Kansas City's established neighborhoods with big shade trees, root intrusion is the most likely reason your sewer line acts up. It is the number one cause of sewer trouble we see here, and there is a clear reason why.

Why roots target sewer lines

A sewer line is a steady source of two things roots crave: water and nutrients. Tree roots grow toward that moisture, and the older clay and cast iron pipe common in KC's pre-1980s homes has joints every few feet. A tiny gap or a hairline crack at a joint lets in a thread of root, the root thickens, and over a season or two it fills the pipe like a net that catches everything you flush.

The Kansas City combination

Two local factors make it worse. First, the housing stock: many neighborhoods were built when clay (and later cast iron) pipe was standard, and those jointed pipes are exactly what roots exploit. Second, our shifting clay soil moves with the wet-dry cycle, which cracks and offsets old pipe and opens up new entry points. Mature trees plus old jointed pipe plus moving soil is the perfect storm.

Signs it is roots and not just a clog

• Clogs that come back every few months no matter how often you snake the line.
• Gurgling and slow drains across the whole house.
• A snake that catches and pulls back stringy root material.

The lasting fix

Snaking or cutting the roots clears the line for a while, but the roots grow back because the entry point is still there. The permanent fix is to seal the pipe so roots cannot get in. Pipe lining is ideal for this: it forms a smooth, jointless pipe inside the old one with no gaps for roots to find. For a line roots have already broken apart, pipe bursting replaces it. A camera inspection, the first step on our sewer line repair page, shows how far the intrusion has gone.

Frequently asked questions