Drain Cleaning
A drain that blocks once is an event. A drain that blocks every few months is telling you something about the pipe behind it.
Where the blockage actually is
The first question worth answering is how far down the trouble sits, because it changes who is responsible for it as well as how it gets fixed.
| The trap | Directly under the fixture. Hair, grease, a dropped object. One fixture affected, nothing else |
|---|---|
| The branch | The horizontal run from your fixtures to the stack. Two or three fixtures in the same apartment go slow together |
| The stack | The vertical waste pipe serving every apartment on the line. Fixtures on several floors misbehave, and lower floors get it worst |
| The house drain | The horizontal pipe in the cellar carrying the whole building out to the street. Everything backs up, starting at the lowest fixture |
If your neighbors are fine and only your kitchen sink is slow, it is yours. If the tub on three, the sink on two and the floor drain in the cellar all act up in the same week, it is the building's, and the managing agent needs to know before anybody pays anyone.
What blocks drains in these buildings
Grease, and the long horizontal run
Converted buildings have kitchens in places the original architect never imagined, often far from the stack. A long, nearly flat branch run gives grease every opportunity to cool and stick. It builds a lining rather than a plug, so the drain gets gradually slower for a year and then blocks completely in a week.
Cast iron that has lost its bore
Original waste piping in a 1910 building is cast iron. A century of scale and corrosion narrows the inside diameter and roughens it. A four inch pipe that is effectively two and a half inches with a surface like coarse sandpaper catches everything that goes past.
Wipes, and what they do to a shared stack
Anything described as flushable does not break up. In a building where one stack serves twelve apartments, it only takes one household to produce a blockage that presents in someone else's bathroom.
The wrong pitch after a renovation
Waste needs fall. A branch reworked during a kitchen or bathroom remodel and run slightly level, or worse, slightly uphill, will never drain properly no matter how often it is cleared.
How we clear it
- Cabling for most single-fixture blockages. A cutting head on a flexible cable, sized to the pipe. Fast and effective on soft blockages.
- Hydro jetting where the pipe is lined rather than plugged. Water at pressure scours the wall back to bare pipe, which cabling cannot do.
- Camera inspection when it has blocked before. Clearing a repeat blockage without looking is how you end up clearing it again in April.
They generate heat, they rarely reach the actual blockage in a long branch run, and what does not react sits in the trap. On old cast iron and on the rubber gaskets used in no-hub couplings they do real harm. If one has already been poured, say so when we arrive so nobody opens a trap without knowing.
Need this doing?
Call and describe the problem. You will get the price before anyone starts.