3 Reasons You May Be Smelling Sewer Gas In Your Commercial Bathrooms

While bathrooms do not always have a pleasant smell, they should not smell like sewer. If the bathrooms in your business smell like sewer, you could be putting your employees at risk for health problems. While you might immediately think the issue is caused by a full septic tank, there might actually be other reasons this is happening.

Septic tank needs to be pumped

One of the first things to consider checking is the septic tank. If the tank is full, there is a good chance that the sewage is backing up into your building through your toilets. Sewage can also come back up through sink drains too, and this happens because all plumbing pipes that enter a septic meet at some point.

The only way to solve the problem in this case is to have the septic tank cleaned out, and you can call a septic tank cleaning company for this.

Dry sink and floor drains

Another thing to check is the drains in your bathrooms. If a drain is dry, sewer gases can leak through it, causing a horrible smell to occur in the bathroom. This smell is made up of a combination of sewer gases, with methane being the most common. The problem with sewer gases is that they are dangerous to breathe in. Your employees could get sick from this, but there is an easy solution.

The solution is to fill the drains with water. When there is water present in a drain, sewer gases cannot come up through the drain. These gases are forced through the vents in the system and will not come up through the drains. If you use the sinks often, there is probably enough water in those drains. Floor drains, on the other hand, do not always get water in them, which causes them to dry out.

Clogged vent pipes

The third common reason bathrooms smell like sewer gas is because of a clogged vent pipe. If the tank is not full, and if the drains have water in them, the problem is likely caused by an issue with the sewer vent. This is a vent that runs from the drains to the exterior of the building. If the vent is clogged, the sewer gases will back up in the building. Sewer gases may also leak into buildings if the vents are cracked or broken.

You can hire a sewer contractor, like Southern Sanitary Systems Inc, to locate the problem. Once the problem is found, the sewer contractor will fix it, which will eliminate the bad odors you are smelling. 


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