Drain Cleaning
Slow sinks, gurgling tubs, a kitchen line that backs up every holiday. We clear it, then put a camera down so you can see why it happened.
Tell us which fixtures are slow and how long it has been going on. That usually tells us where the blockage is before we arrive.
Need someone now? Call 727-692-3005
Anyone can push a cable down a line, break through the blockage, and watch the water go. That is a clear, not a repair, and if the underlying cause is still there you will be calling someone again in a few months.
Around Pinellas County the cause is usually one of four things. Grease in a kitchen branch, which cools and hardens on the pipe wall until the opening is the size of a pencil. Hair and soap in a bath line. Roots in an older clay or cast iron lateral, which find the joints and grow toward the water. Or scale, where a cast iron drain that went in during the 1950s has rusted inward until a four inch pipe passes about two inches of flow.
Each one has a different fix, and you cannot tell them apart from the top of the drain. That is why the camera goes down after the line is open, not instead of clearing it.
The goal is not just to get the water moving again. It is to leave you knowing what is in your pipe and what it will take to keep it clear.
A single slow fixture is a branch problem. Several at once, or anything involving a floor drain, points at the main. That changes the tool and the access point.
Cable and cutter head sized to the line, run from the correct cleanout so we are not pushing debris further into the house.
Once water is moving we run the line on camera to see what is actually left on the pipe wall and whether the pipe itself is sound.
You see what we see. Grease looks different from scale, and scale looks different from a root intrusion or a cracked joint.
Sometimes the answer is jetting. Sometimes it is a spot repair. Sometimes it is nothing at all and a habit change in the kitchen.
If you have one drain that keeps clogging, it is almost always the kitchen. There are a few reasons that stack up.
The kitchen branch is usually the smallest drain doing the hardest work. Warm grease and oil go down as a liquid, hit a pipe that is sitting at ground temperature, and set on the wall like candle wax. Every wash after that adds another layer. Coffee grounds, rice and pasta then stick to the grease rather than passing through.
A garbage disposal makes it worse, not better. It grinds solids fine enough to stay suspended long enough to reach the grease and bind to it. Running cold water while you grind is the right habit, but the real fix is not putting grease down the sink at all. Pour it into a can, let it set, bin it.
The other thing to skip is store bought chemical drain cleaner. It generates heat inside the pipe, which is fine for PVC once, and genuinely bad for old cast iron, where it accelerates the corrosion that is already narrowing the line. If a chemical did not clear it in one try, a second bottle sitting on top of a blockage is caustic liquid we then have to work around when we arrive.
If your kitchen line clogs more than once a year, that is not bad luck. Get a camera in it.
A camera inspection tells you which of these you are looking at. Each one has its own page.
A straightforward branch line is usually under an hour. A main line with roots or heavy scale can take longer, and the camera run adds time on top of that.
On a main line, or on any drain that has clogged before, yes. On a one time hair clog in a bathroom sink it is usually not worth your money.
A correctly sized head run at the right speed will not. An oversized cutter forced through a pipe that is already thin can. That is another reason we look before we choose the head.
If it has cleared and stayed clear for months, no. If it clears and comes back, the blockage never really left, and each cycle is putting more waste against a narrowing pipe.
They do not break in. They find an existing gap at a joint or a hairline crack, and once a root tip reaches moisture it thickens into a mat inside the line. Older laterals in established Pinellas neighborhoods are the usual candidates.
Cleaning opens the line. Jetting scours the wall back toward the original diameter. If your pipe is coated rather than plugged, jetting is what actually fixes it.
We clear it, camera it, and tell you straight whether it needs anything more.