Keep out of the affected area
- Keep children and pets away from the area entirely.
- Do not run fans in the space. Moving air spreads contamination through the house.
- Do not attempt to extract it with household equipment.
- Avoid using drains and fixtures on that line until the cause is identified.
- Photograph the extent before anything is moved.
Why sewage is a different job
With clean water, the problem is moisture and the goal is to get materials back to normal. With sewage, moisture is the secondary issue. The water carries bacteria and organic material that soak into porous surfaces and stay there after the water is gone. Extracting and drying a carpet that has been through a sewage backup returns it to normal moisture while leaving the contamination in place.
That single fact drives the whole approach. Rather than asking what can be dried, the work asks what can be cleaned all the way through. Material that can only be cleaned on the surface comes out.
How the work proceeds
The area is contained before anything is removed. Openings to the rest of the house are sheeted off and the work zone is put under negative pressure, so air flows into it and is filtered on the way out rather than carrying contamination into clean parts of the home. Skipping this step means the removal itself distributes the problem.
Affected porous material is then removed and bagged. That typically means carpet and padding, the lower band of drywall, wet insulation, particleboard, and laminate or engineered flooring. Non-porous material such as concrete, tile, sealed hardwood and structural framing can usually be cleaned and kept, since contamination stays on the surface where it can be reached.
Cleaning follows removal, and only after cleaning does the structure get dried in the ordinary way, with air movers and dehumidification under moisture readings. Drying before cleaning would set contamination into the materials being dried.
Where these losses come from in the Conejo Valley
Laterals of the same age as the houses
The tracts that built this valley between 1960 and 1980 were plumbed with cast iron indoors and clay laterals to the street. Clay separates at the joints and takes roots; cast iron corrodes from the inside until the base of the pipe opens. Clay soils that swell each winter and shrink back over the dry summer work those joints a little further apart every year.
A wet season delivered in a few storms
Around fifteen inches of rain fall here in an average year and nearly all of it comes between November and March. A system that handles steady rain without difficulty takes far more than it was sized for when an atmospheric river sits over the valley for two days, and groundwater entering through cracked laterals adds to what the mains are already carrying.
Septic systems on the rim
Santa Rosa Valley, Hidden Valley and the acreage around Lake Sherwood run on septic rather than municipal sewer. A leach field can only disperse into soil with capacity to accept it, and after several days of winter rain that soil is already full. The backup that follows is seasonal, recurs in the same weeks each year, and clearing the line does not prevent the next one.
No basement, so it surfaces in the house
On slab construction there is no lower level and no floor drain to take a backup, so waste rises to the drain closest to the floor in the living space itself. In these floor plans that is normally a shower pan, a bathtub or a laundry standpipe, which is why a backup is discovered as contaminated water spreading across finished flooring rather than in a utility space.
Sewage cleanup by city
- Thousand OaksZIP 91360, 91362, 91358
- Newbury ParkZIP 91320
- CalabasasZIP 91302
- Agoura HillsZIP 91301
- Oak ParkZIP 91377
- Westlake VillageZIP 91361
- Casa ConejoZIP 91320
- Santa Rosa ValleyZIP 93012
- Lake SherwoodZIP 91361
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why can sewage water not simply be extracted and dried?
- Because the concern is contamination rather than moisture. Water from a sewer backup carries bacteria and organic material that remain in porous surfaces after the water itself is gone. Drying a saturated carpet returns it to normal moisture but does nothing about what soaked into it, which is why porous material affected by sewage is removed rather than dried.
- What has to be removed after a sewage backup?
- Generally carpet and padding, the lower band of drywall, wet insulation, particleboard and any laminate or engineered flooring the water reached. Non-porous surfaces such as concrete, tile, sealed hardwood and framing can usually be cleaned and kept. The dividing line is whether the material can be cleaned all the way through or only on the surface.
- Is a backup from a clean toilet treated the same way?
- Water from a toilet overflow that has not passed the trap is a lesser category and is handled less aggressively. Once water has come back up from the lateral or the main, or has passed through the trap, it is treated as contaminated regardless of how it looks or smells. Describe what actually happened when you call, since the two get very different responses.
- How is the rest of the house kept clean during the work?
- The affected area is contained before removal starts, usually with sheeting over openings and negative air pressure inside the work zone so air flows into it rather than out into the rest of the home. Material comes out bagged. Without containment, the removal itself distributes contamination through the house.
- Why do backups keep happening on the older streets in this valley?
- Because the lines under them are as old as the houses. The tracts built here between 1960 and 1980 went in with cast iron inside the house and clay laterals out to the street, and both fail by age: cast iron corrodes from the inside until the base of the pipe opens, clay separates at the joints and takes roots. Clay soils that swell each wet season and shrink back over the summer work those joints apart a little further every year.