Drain, sewer cleaning & repair in Howell, NJ.

Drain and sewer service in Howell, NJ

Howell is home. Our shop is at 3420 US Route 9, which means the calls we take here are usually the ones we get to fastest, and it means we have been under a lot of this township with a camera. Sixty-five square miles, sewered corridors, large septic territory, and sand almost everywhere you dig.

What we handle in Howell

• Drain cleaning for kitchen, bath and laundry lines
• Main sewer line cleaning from the cleanout to the main
• Camera inspections, including new laterals on septic-to-sewer conversions
• Hydro jetting for grease, scale and root-packed lines
• Sewer line repair and replacement
• Emergency service nights, weekends and holidays

In Howell sand, a cracked line does not just leak. It takes the ground in.

The New Jersey Geological Survey uses this township as its own illustration. In the state’s information circular on the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer system, Figure 3 is captioned as fine-grained shallow marine shelf sand deposits of the Kirkwood Formation in Howell Township. The circular describes a water-table aquifer where the water in the ground sits just below the land surface in most areas, highly permeable because it is dominated by well-sorted medium to coarse sand.

Howell’s own land use rules confirm how shallow that is. Plan submissions have to include a soil boring demonstrating the basement is at least two feet above the seasonal high water table. The township writes that requirement because the water table routinely reaches foundation depth, which is lateral depth.

Here is why that matters for your pipe. A lateral buried in saturated, well-sorted sand has no cohesive soil around it. Sand cannot bridge a gap. So any crack, offset joint or root entry becomes a two-way opening: groundwater flows in, and sand migrates in with it. The grit settles in the pipe, and the bedding above the defect washes away, so the line sags and the opening widens. What you experience is a drain that runs slow, then backs up every few weeks, then fails, and it is always worse after rain and in spring.

The township has codified exactly this failure mode. Howell serves notice on any user with broken service lines causing infiltration into the system to repair them no later than fourteen days from that notice. It is also a violation to discharge any drainage other than sanitary sewage into the system, so redirecting a sump into the lateral is never the fix.

Cabling a line like that clears the symptom. A camera tells you whether you have a defect that is quietly eating your bedding.

Freewood Acres and the Route 9 sewer extension

This one is our own corridor. Hundreds of long-established homes along Route 9 North and through Freewood Acres were on private septic and private wells until the Route 9 North Sanitary Sewer Extension. The official notice started a four-year clock on May 1, 2021, and that deadline passed on May 1, 2025.

Properties that have not connected are billed the yearly sewer rental charge and connection fees regardless. Connection is now compelled at resale or transfer of deed, before permits for interior or exterior renovation, for a land use permit for anything increasing demand including a finished basement or a pool, and on any change of use or tenancy for commercial property. Fines run to two thousand dollars per day.

If that is your street, the practical work is a new lateral, tank abandonment, and interior drain plumbing that was never designed for a municipal connection. We camera the new run before it is buried and again after, so what you paid for is what is in the ground. One scheduling note from the ordinance itself: Howell does not accept lateral installation applications between December 15 and April 15 unless the owner covers the added cold-weather cost, so this is spring and summer work.

What Howell customers say

Thomas Dellert is a master plumber in this township. When he cannot clear a line, he calls us, which is a referral we take seriously.

“As a fellow Master Plumber in Howell, I run into a lot of big clogs that I am not equipped to tackle, so when I can’t get the clog I call Danny and he always gets it flowing again.”

Thomas Dellert

Bob Sorrentino’s call is a good example of a job where the right answer was not to sell anything.

“Within 90 minutes of calling Just Drains had a man at our home. After working for about 30 minutes he checked the manhole in the street and determined that the blockage was in the main. He then waited as I called DPW and explained the problem to them averting a disaster in our home. I highly recommend them.”

Bob Sorrentino

Checking the manhole is a two-minute step that decides whose problem it is. Read more customer reviews.