Drain and sewer problems rarely start out as emergencies. Most begin as small, easy-to-ignore signs — a slow drain here, a strange smell there — long before they turn into a backed-up sewer line or a flooded basement. At Doherty’s Plumbing and Drain, we’ve spent over 20 years helping homeowners throughout the Colorado Front Range catch these problems early, before they become costly repairs.
If you own a home in Keenesburg, Hudson, Fort Lupton, Brighton, Firestone, Erie, Longmont, Barr Lake, or anywhere else within our service area, here are five warning signs worth paying attention to.
A single slow drain usually points to a localized clog — hair in the bathroom sink, grease in the kitchen drain, that sort of thing. But when several drains throughout the house are draining slowly at once, that’s a different story. It often means the blockage is further downstream, somewhere in the main line that all of those fixtures share.
This is one of the clearest signs that the problem isn’t a simple fixture-level clog. It could be tree roots, grease buildup, or debris accumulating in the sewer line itself. Ignoring it usually means the problem gets worse, not better, and eventually leads to a backup.
If you flush a toilet and hear gurgling coming from a nearby sink or tub, or if drains make odd bubbling noises when water is running elsewhere in the house, that’s air trying to escape a partially blocked pipe. It’s your plumbing system telling you something is restricting normal flow.
This symptom is easy to dismiss because it doesn’t stop anything from working — yet. But it’s often an early warning that a clog or blockage is developing in the drain or sewer line, and it tends to get louder and more frequent as the restriction grows.
A sewage smell in your bathroom, basement, or yard is never something to brush off. Properly functioning drain and sewer systems are designed to keep those odors contained. When you can smell them, it usually means there’s a blockage, a cracked pipe, a dry P-trap, or in more serious cases, a break in the sewer line allowing gas to escape.
We regularly use sewer camera inspections to pinpoint exactly where an odor is coming from rather than guessing. This saves homeowners from unnecessary digging and gets to the real source of the problem quickly.
If you’ve had a drain cleaned or snaked and the clog comes right back within a few weeks or months, that’s a strong indicator the underlying cause was never fully resolved. Store-bought drain cleaners and basic snaking can sometimes punch a temporary hole through a blockage without actually clearing it.
This is one of the most common reasons we recommend combining hydro jetting with a camera inspection for recurring problems. Hydro jetting uses high-pressure water to scour the entire interior of the pipe, not just create a narrow path through the debris, which tends to hold up much longer than a quick snake job.
Water pooling around a basement floor drain, or unusually soggy, soft patches in the yard near where your sewer line runs, can point to a break, a bellied pipe, or a blockage causing wastewater to surface somewhere it shouldn’t. In rural and semi-rural Front Range properties especially, older sewer lines and shifting soil conditions can lead to these kinds of issues over time.
This is one of the situations where waiting can turn a moderate repair into a major excavation project. Catching it early with a proper camera inspection often means a smaller, more targeted fix instead of a full line replacement.
None of these signs guarantee a major problem on their own, but together or repeated over time, they’re worth taking seriously. Our approach is always the same: find the actual source of the issue before recommending repairs. That means real diagnostics — not guesswork — using tools like sewer cameras and hydro jetting equipment designed to show us exactly what’s happening inside your pipes.
If you’re dealing with slow drains, recurring clogs, odd smells, or standing water anywhere on your property, our team is available 24/7 to take a look. We provide drain and sewer services throughout the Front Range, and we’re always happy to explain what we find in plain language before any work begins.
Based in Keenesburg, Doherty’s Plumbing and Drain proudly serves homeowners and businesses throughout the Colorado Front Range within roughly a 50-mile radius, including Hudson, Fort Lupton, Brighton, Firestone, Erie, Longmont, and Barr Lake. If you’re unsure whether your property falls within our service area, give us a call — we’re always happy to check.
