Plant roots around toilet base.

Long story short:

Out of town, back to find slab leak and 75% of house flooded. The water actually came up in the master bathroom, leak was in the Kitchen 25ft away. Got leak fixed and house dried out. Now removing damaged cabinets and wall to repair. Got the toilet removed from the floor to find a mass of tiny roots embedded in the wax ring. This is where the water came up from under the slab. The roots do not appear to be inside the sewer line, just in the waxring from what I can tell. There is an external wall nearby, the only plants nearby are roses. Neighbors have lots of growth in their yard, but they are at least 40ft away. This root growth is also quite new as we had the toilet up about 3 years ago to lay ceramic tiles. No roots then.

Any ideas about how to kill this stuff off and remove it? Whats the usual procedure with this situation?

Thanks, tM

Reply to
themeanies
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That's a new one. You can do what you want there, but you are not likely to be able to kill of the roots. To do that would require killing off the whole plant. Right now you don't know what plant it is. Assuming the roses are close the the wall, it could be them, but really I would not expect them to go under the footer and find there way that far, but a large old rose bush.

Some trees could go 40 feet, and they would be a larger problem. I suggest you figure this one out before you find that those roots are damaging your foundation, which they can.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

tM

I don't follow why the roots are a problem. Think for a minute, the toilet does not have enough water to cause the amount of damage that you saw. You had a big leak from somewhere and the roots may be a symptom. Use a poison on the roots to get rid of them and find out where all that water is coming from. You may have a leaking pipe in the slab or a drainage problem.

Good luck, Dave M.

Reply to
David Martel

I think the OP knows about the leak and it has been fixed

"The water actually came up in the master bathroom, leak was in the Kitchen 25ft away. Got leak fixed and house dried out."

It has been my experience that once roots find a source of water, poison is only a temporary fix. Maybe this is different in different areas. I would expect the OP would be interested in any additional information about what "poison" might work for him. I would like to have offered some advice on how to address the root issue, but frankly I don't know.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Sorry, probably need a bit more explaining here. We found the leak already. The leak was actually in a hot water pipe between the hot water heater and the kitchen sink. We found it through acoustics. We abandoned that line and ran a new one through the attic. When the pipe gave way water that escaped built up under the slab until it forced through at the first point it found. This happened to be the path the roots I found also took. I know this is where the water came up because the entire room was filled with silt from under the foundation. I've never had any problem with roots before, but I do know how destructive they can be. I didn't even know about the roots until we moved the toilet yesterday to begin sheetrock repair. But now that I do things make much more sense.

My question here was really about how to defend against the encroaching root system and how to clean them out of there before they get even more out of hand. I'll try to get some pictures on a website for visual tomorrow.

I'll try killing them off with a poison an see if anything outside dies. I don't have anything outside that I prefer more than my foundation that's for sure.

Thanks, tM

Reply to
themeanies

Copper Sulphate or just about anything with (ionic) copper in it will keep roots at a distance.

You can dissolve the copper sulphate in water and saturate the crack in the slab. Roots will never live in that soil again and the source plant may not even be damaged if the treated area is localized and plenty of other roots still exist. It is not technically a herbacide but roots cannot function it its presence

A spoonfull of the stuff down the drain once in a while is supposed to help also but I would think it would be washed away too soon to have long lasting effect but it might help clear a partially invaded drain pipe.

Reply to
PipeDown

Live in Arizona, by any chance? Friend used to have Oleander roots from the neighbors hedge regularly put a shoot up the drain hole in his bathtub. I had a hot water line break under my slab, also. Based on the water bill, I figured about 30,000 gallons leaked out before I figured out something was wrong. I was told the expansion/contraction of the water line against a rock under the slab was probably the culprit, but I think more likely it was the 90 pound water pressure from the city. After the second leak a year later, I added a pressure regulator to the house. The 90 pound pressure used to unscrew the sprinkler heads in my yard. Now, I'm back in Illinois where we never seem to have those water pressure problems but unfortunately, this year we do seem to have Arizona heat. Tom

Reply to
Tom

Joseph,

I'm not much of a plant person but once he has addressed the water issue I don't see why new roots will grow into a non leaking wax ring. Is your experience different?

Dave M.

Reply to
David Martel

clipped

This is truly bizarre, and the OP seems to indicate not only a large amount of water but a lot of pressure. No rose bush will send roots under a slab and up under a toilet. I would suspect that there is also a leaky sewer line and a tree adding to the trouble. If the "roots" are truly only in the wax ring, and not in the sewer line, perhaps they are fungus and not real roots.

We had sewer back up couple of months ago, both toilets at the same time. Obviously not a toilet problem. Called the condo chief, told me to call a plumber. Did so. Whilst they drilled out the main sewer line for the condo, all the way to the other side of the street, a neighbor stopped by and said their toilet also backing up. Also called the city to see if main line problems reported, they said no. They had already done a lot of work on sewer, including a new pump station down the street about a year before. Last week there was a hang tag on the door to the effect that the city will be working on sewer lines and we should limit our water use. They worked on lines directly across the street. Now, I am thinking that if there were really roots in your wax ring, they might have come from seeds in sewer sludge that backed up and leaked under your toilet. My brother in law used to use sewer sludge for garden fertilizer, and got lots of free tomato plants in the deal :o)

Reply to
Norminn

Plant roots are really persistent. Maybe the OP would not have any more problems, but I would not bet on it. Plants have lived here a lot longer than we have; they must be doing something right. :-)

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Here is an image.

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Though you can't see in this image, there are no roots *in* the sewer.

I haven't been able to get my plumber out yet so I'm not really wanting to mess with it just yet. I'm going to dig around in the bed just out side where the sewer access point is. Maybe something has followed it.

Thanks so much for all the valuable input. tM

Reply to
themeanies

looks like you may find more roots under the vinyl flooring. Roots like that won't cause a crack but will readily follow one to a source or nourishment (what could be tastier to a plant than a leaking toilet). I sure hope it don't lead to a vegitable garden :)'

Reply to
PipeDown

May not matter, but that is Ceramic tile. I doubt there are any roots there, under the mastic and grout. We'll find out when i clean it all off. No veggies nearby, only shallow root system wildflowers and a couple of 2-3 year old rose bushes. Nearest big root system comes from the neighbor about 40ft away from this location.

I finally talked to my plumber who says this is a pretty common occurrence in our area. He says what usually happens and hadn't happened yet in our case is that the feeder roots grow up and over and down into the sewer pipe. Mine hadn't done that, but he's seen them grow 10+ ft down into the sewer. So his suggestion was to just clean out the old wax ring and visible root system and then soak with lots of salt water. I may try the ionic copper another poster suggested. So looks like things are going to be okay and could have been much worse.

Thanks again to all posters. I'll post a new pic after the cleanup.

tM

Reply to
themeanies

That is definately a strange problem. I tend to think one of two things occurred.

  1. The roots are coming up around the OUTSIDE of the pipe from a tree, even if it is 40feet away
  2. Do you put a lot of kitchen waste down the toilet? It looks like that wax ring was leaking on the one side. If a seed got under there, it may have sprouted.

One other thing, what kind of tree is that one that's 40 feet away? Some have more root spread than others. I can not answer which ones though. We need a botonist for that. Trees look for water, especially in drought times, and a leaking toilet supplies water AND fertilizer. plus the loose gravel in the pipe trench make for easy spread of roots.

Reply to
maradcliff

replying to maradcliff, jdc wrote: I had the same problem. Roots grew up the OUTSIDE of the toilet drain pipe, between the slab and the pipe. Then they grew through the wax seal, just like growing through soil, and then grew down into the pipe, like a horsetail hanging in the pipe. The plumber had seen this before, but said mine was an extreme case. Before replacing the wax seal, he packed a paste of coarse salt around the drain pipe, into the space between the pipe and the slab. I hope this lasts, but if someone knows a better fix, please le me know.

Reply to
jdc

Sure, remove the trees from your yard.  No trees = no roots in your plumbing.

And if you live in thunderstorm country, you won't have to worry about a tree falling on your house and you waking up with a tree branch up your ass.

Reply to
Edward Lewis

I would be concerned about what the corrosive salt will do to the waste line. Even if the line is a plastic of some kind, the salt could still damage it.

Reply to
Stormin' Norman

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