David Martel wrote:

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.




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