One fixture is slow, the rest are fine
The restriction is in that fixture's own branch, often within a few feet of the trap. A local problem with a local fix.
Drain Cleaning
Blocked Drains, Cleared Properly
Slow sinks, a tub that won't empty, a toilet that gurgles when the washer runs, or a main line coming back up in the basement. We clear it — then tell you what put it there.
Start Here
A drain doesn't block overnight
By the time water is standing in the sink, that line has usually been closing up for months. Waste narrows the pipe a little at a time until only a channel is left down the middle — and then one ordinary evening something ordinary goes down and shuts it.
That changes what a proper repair looks like. Punching a hole through the middle of a blockage gets water moving again, but it does not give you the pipe back. If the walls are still coated, you'll be standing over the same sink before the year is out.
So when we clear a drain we want two answers: where the restriction sits, and what it's made of. Both are usually written on the cable when it comes back out — grease looks nothing like hair, and neither looks anything like root.
Drain photo
Cable machine set up at a basement cleanout, or the auger head with
what came out of the line. Landscape, ~1200×900.
Lines we clear
- Kitchen sinks, dishwashers and garburator lines
- Tubs, showers, basins and toilets
- Laundry standpipes and utility sinks
- Basement, garage and workshop floor drains
- Main lines running out to a septic tank or sewer
- Root cutting in older clay and cast-iron waste lines
Read The Signs
What the drain is telling you
Which fixtures misbehave, and when, narrows a blockage down before anybody opens a toolbox. Worth a look before you call — it shortens the job.
Everything in the house drains slowly
That points downstream at the main line — the one pipe every other drain empties into on its way to the septic tank or sewer.
The toilet gurgles when the washer drains
Air being forced past a partial blockage, or a vent that isn't breathing. A washer dumps a lot of water fast, so it shows up there first.
Water rises in the tub or the floor drain
A backed-up main escapes at the lowest opening in the house. Stop running water and phone — this one gets worse by the hour.
It clears itself, then blocks again
A drain on a schedule is a symptom, not bad luck. Something is still in that pipe, and each clearing only reopens a channel through it.
A smell, but the water runs fine
Usually a trap that dried out in a spare bathroom or unused sink. Pour a jug of water down it. If the smell stays, the venting needs a look.
Four Different Jobs
Not every drain clogs
for the same reason
A kitchen line and a main line fail in completely different ways and don't get the same treatment. Knowing which you've got tells you how worried to be.
The kitchen line
Grease is the whole story. It leaves the pan hot and liquid, travels a few feet into cold pipe, cools, and sticks to the wall — where it starts collecting coffee grounds, rice and everything else that follows it down. Running hot water behind it only pushes the problem somewhere less convenient.
A garburator makes it faster, not slower: it sends a steady feed of fine solids into a pipe never sized to carry them.
The bathroom line
Hair and soap, wound together. Soap scum lays down a sticky film on the pipe wall, hair catches on the film and mats, and the two build a plug that grows slowly and predictably. Tubs and showers almost always go this way.
A bathroom basin is different again. It usually blocks at the trap or on the pop-up stopper rod — a short job if that's genuinely all it is, and worth ruling out before anyone charges you for more.
The main line out to septic or sewer
Out here a good many homes aren't on municipal sewer at all — the main runs underground to a septic tank and field. Two things stop it. Tree roots find a joint, grow in looking for water, and catch everything that passes. Or the pipe develops a belly: a low spot where the ground has settled, holding standing water that never fully clears.
A full tank backs a house up exactly like a blocked pipe does, so it's worth knowing when yours was last pumped before anybody puts a cable down the line.
Floor drains
A floor drain sits unused for months and its trap dries out, which is why the smell turns up long before any water does. In a basement or workshop they also take in silt, sawdust and whatever gets washed across the floor.
One thing to be clear about: if a floor drain is pushing water up rather than taking it down, the floor drain isn't your problem. The main is, and that drain is simply the lowest place it can get out.
How The Work Goes
Cable first, and a
straight answer after
There's no mystery to drain work. This is what actually happens once we're through the door.
Step 01
Work out which line
We ask what's slow, what's still fine, and what happens when the washer empties. That narrows it to a branch or the main before a tool comes off the truck.
Step 02
Get proper access
Through a cleanout where the house has one, the trap arm under the fixture, or by pulling a toilet if that's the honest way to reach the main. Sheets down first, and the fixture goes back the way it came off.
Step 03
Cable the blockage
An auger — a steel cable driven by a machine — is fed down the pipe until it reaches the obstruction and cuts through. Different heads for different work: a small one for a sink trap, a cutting head for roots in a main. Where a line is heavily coated, or keeps blocking no matter how often it's cabled, high-pressure water jetting scours the pipe wall instead of boring through the middle.
Step 04
Test it, then explain it
We run real volume through the line — fill the tub, flush twice, run the washer — not a trickle from the tap. Then you're told what came back on the cable, and whether we expect to see it again.
Why Not To Wait
What a slow drain turns into
Drains are cheap to clear and expensive to ignore. The bill for leaving one is almost never the plumbing bill.
- A backup, not a blockageOnce a main gives up, waste comes back into the house at the lowest fixture it can find. Flooring, drywall and anything stored on a basement floor become a cleanup job, not a plumbing repair.
- Water damage nobody seesA blocked line puts standing weight on joints that were only ever meant to drain. What follows is a slow seep into the cabinet base and the floor under it — a pipe repair stacked on top of a drain call.
- Strain on the septic systemRepeat backups and water forced through a restricted line are hard on a tank and field — the most expensive part of a property's water and waste system to put right.
- An emergency instead of an appointmentA drain cleared on a Wednesday morning is a booking. The same drain letting go on a long weekend, with company in the house, is an emergency call-out.
Before You Call
Worth a try yourself —
and when to stop
We'd rather you saved the call-out on a job you can handle in ten minutes — and rather you didn't turn a small drain job into a large one.
Fair game
- Undo the trap under a bathroom basin into a bucket and clean it out. Two slip nuts, hand tight going back on.
- Lift out the pop-up stopper. A surprising amount of hair sits on the rod right below it.
- Take the cover off a shower drain and hook out whatever is within reach.
- Plunge a sink with the overflow held shut, so the pressure goes down the pipe instead of straight back out of it.
- Refill a dry trap — a jug of water down an unused sink or floor drain kills that smell.
- Write down which fixtures are affected and when it started before you phone.
Stop and phone us
- More than one fixture is slow, or a toilet gurgles when another drain runs.
- Water is coming up out of something instead of going down it.
- It's the same drain again. A third time in a year is not a plunger problem.
- You've hired a drain snake and met something solid that won't give.
- The house is on septic and nobody can remember the last pump-out.
- You're reaching for a bottle of chemical drain cleaner.
About chemical drain cleaner
It's the one thing we'd ask you not to reach for. Those products work by caustic action and heat, and in an older house — where waste lines may still be galvanised steel or cast iron — that goes to work on the pipe as well as the clog, at exactly the spot where the wall is already thinnest.
It also rarely reaches the blockage. The liquid sits in the standing water above it, diluting, doing very little to hair or cooled grease further down. What it does do is leave a length of pipe full of caustic water, which then comes back at whoever opens that trap.
If you've already poured some down, just say so when you call. Nobody's judging — we only need to know before the line comes apart.
Ready When You Are
Drain running slow? Let's get it moving.
Tell us which fixtures are affected and how long it's been going on. We'll tell you what it's likely to take and book you in — sooner if water is coming up rather than going down.
506-321-6782Mon–Fri 8:00am–5:00pm · emergency call-outs by arrangement