Drain Cleaning

When this becomes an emergency

• Blockages returning on roughly the same schedule each year.
• A gurgle in the lowest drain whenever anything upstairs empties.
• Soil or grit showing up in the water that backs into a basement drain.

What a pro does

Cleaning is what you do when clearing has stopped being enough. If a line has needed a cable twice in a year, something about the pipe is holding material, and the plumber's job is to find out what. A camera goes in from the cleanout and the picture usually names one of four things: scale narrowing old iron, roots at a joint, a settled section holding water, or a break letting soil in. Seasonal timing is a genuine clue in New York. Blockages that arrive with the spring thaw often mean groundwater is getting into a damaged line and carrying silt with it, which settles when the flow slows. Roots do their growing through the summer and show up as an autumn problem. Once the defect is known the method follows from it. Jetting suits grease and scale in a sound pipe, mechanical cutting suits roots, and a settled or broken run isn't a cleaning problem at all. Homes on their own septic in the Catskills and the Adirondacks get one more check, because a full or failing tank backs a house drain up in a way no amount of cleaning will fix.

Frequently asked questions

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