Slow or Clogged Drain?
Cleared Same Day
by a Licensed Master Plumber.

What a Drain Problem Actually Looks Like

Most drain problems announce themselves slowly. The kitchen sink takes a little longer to empty than it did last month. Water pools around your feet in the shower instead of going down. A drain you already cleaned starts smelling again after a few days. Something gurgles in another room when the washing machine drains. None of those are dramatic on their own, which is exactly why they get ignored until the day water comes back up instead of going down.

There is one thing worth checking before you call anyone, because it tells you a lot. Notice whether the trouble is limited to one fixture or showing up in several. If only the bathroom sink is slow while the tub and toilet next to it drain fine, the blockage is almost certainly close by, in the pipe serving that one fixture. Hair, soap, grease, and toothpaste build up on the inside walls of that short section of pipe until water can barely squeeze past.

If two or more fixtures act up at the same time, or a toilet bubbles when the shower runs, the problem is further downstream in the main line, the single large pipe that carries waste from every drain in the house out to the sewer. Everything upstream shares that pipe, so a blockage there shows up in multiple places at once. Water backing up into the lowest drain in the house, often a basement floor drain or a basement shower, points the same direction. That is the version worth calling about quickly, because a main line that is partly blocked usually becomes fully blocked.

How the Job Gets Done

It starts on the phone with Mike, not a call center. He will ask which fixtures are affected, whether it came on gradually or all at once, and what has already been tried. That conversation usually narrows it down to a single fixture clog or a main line issue before he ever pulls into the driveway, which means he arrives with the right equipment for your situation.

On site, the first job is finding out what is actually happening rather than guessing. For a single slow drain that is often straightforward. When the picture is less clear, or when a drain has clogged repeatedly, a camera inspection settles it. A camera on a flexible cable is fed down the line so the inside of the pipe can be seen directly. That shows cracks and breaks in the pipe, tree roots that have worked their way in through a joint, and belly spots, which are places where the pipe has sagged so that water and waste sit in the dip instead of flowing on through. A sagging section will keep collecting debris no matter how many times it gets cleared, and there is no way to know it is there without looking.

Then comes the clearing itself, and the method depends on what was found. Snaking sends a rotating steel cable down the pipe to break through and pull out the blockage, which handles most everyday clogs. Hydro jetting is the heavier option: a high pressure stream of water is sent through the line to scour the inside walls of the pipe clean. Jetting is what gets used when the pipe is not blocked in one spot so much as coated all the way along with years of grease and buildup, because a cable punches a hole through that coating while water strips it off.

Before any of that happens, you get the price. Mike quotes the work in person once he knows what he is dealing with, and nothing starts until you approve it. When the work is done, the area gets cleaned up and he tells you what caused the clog, because knowing the cause is the difference between a drain that is fixed and a drain that is clear until next month.

What Is Included

Every drain in the house is covered: kitchen, bathroom, laundry, and floor drains, plus main line work including both snaking and hydro jetting. Camera inspection is available when the cause is not obvious or a clog keeps returning.

When a drain clogs over and over, the goal is finding out why rather than clearing it again, which is where the camera earns its keep. If the pipe itself is the problem because of a break, roots, or a sagging section, sewer line repair and replacement is part of the work Mike does. He will walk you through what he found and what the options are before anything gets dug up.

One thing that is deliberately not part of the job is harsh chemical drain opener. Those products work by reacting aggressively inside the pipe, and that reaction damages the pipe along with the clog. Mechanical clearing and jetting solve the problem without shortening the life of your plumbing.

Signs It Is Time to Call

The same drain clogs again within weeks of being cleared.

More than one fixture is draining slowly at the same time.

A toilet bubbles or a drain gurgles when you run water somewhere else.

A sewage smell keeps coming back after cleaning.

Water backs up into a basement shower or floor drain.

Standing water in a tub or shower that will not go down.