What causes the plumber found tree roots in my sewer line?
The age of the pipe. Central Indiana housing stock from before roughly the 1970s largely used vitrified clay tile in short sections with mortared or gasketed bell joints, and those joints open with settlement and freeze-thaw; some midcentury laterals are Orangeburg fiber pipe, which deforms and collapses on its own. Solvent-welded PVC with gasketed joints is essentially root-proof when installed correctly. The tree that gets blamed is frequently not the culprit — roots travel well beyond the crown spread, and a neighbor's tree or a stump left in the ground is a common source.
What you'd see
Repeated slow drains or backups at the lowest fixture in the house — floor drain, basement toilet, laundry standpipe; gurgling when a different fixture runs; camera footage showing a white fibrous mass like a mop head at a pipe joint; a strip of unusually green fast-growing grass over the lateral in a dry August; blockages that clear after rodding and return on a rhythm of six to eighteen months.
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