Drain Cleaning in Fort Worth, TX

Mostly grease and food. Grease goes down warm, cools in the pipe and coats the walls, then catches coffee grounds, rice and scraps. A disposal grinds food smaller, but it still travels the whole line. Disposal humming or jammed? See garbage disposal repair.

Hair and soap scum knot together just below sink and tub drains, and they're usually quick to clear. Toilets clog on "flushable" wipes, which don't break down like toilet paper. If the washer standpipe overflows mid-cycle, the clog may be lint in the branch or farther down in the main line.

One slow drain is usually a fixture clog. Several at once points to the main line, which carries everything to the city sewer. Watch for:

A plunger can't reach it. The line has to be cleared from a cleanout or by pulling a toilet.

Snaking handles most household clogs. Jetting restores more of the pipe's width when a line keeps filling with grease or debris.

A waterproof camera goes in through a cleanout and shows what's in the pipe: roots, cracks, offset joints, sags where water sits, or heavy rust scale. It also pinpoints the problem, so any repair goes to the right spot.

A camera inspection makes sense when the same drain clogs more than once a year, the main line has backed up, you suspect roots, or you're buying an older home.

Roots find a joint or hairline crack that leaks a little moisture, grow in, and form a net that catches paper and waste. Clay sewer pipe, laid in short sections with many joints, is especially prone. North Texas clay soil adds to it: the ground swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and over the years that can shift old joints and create sags.

The usual sign is a main line that slows every few months, with each backup coming sooner. We cut the roots out, flush the line and check it with the camera. Roots grow back to the same joint, so we'll tell you plainly whether scheduled cleaning or a sewer line repair is the better spend.

Cast iron rusts from the inside. Over decades the scale narrows the pipe and leaves a rough surface that snags paper and grease, so an old line keeps clogging even when you're careful. Eventually the bottom of a horizontal run can rust through.

In a cast-iron home we run the camera first, clean the line with the right tool for its condition, and show you any rusted-through sections before we talk about drain repair. In pier-and-beam houses, common in historic Fairmount, those lines can be reached from the crawlspace. On a slab they sit under concrete, so pinpointing the problem first matters more.

The price depends on the drain, how we reach it and whether a camera is needed.

Current coupons: $50 off for new customers; 10% off for seniors, military and first responders; $0 dispatch fee with a repair (terms on the coupons page).

Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest times of year for kitchen clogs. Pour cooled grease into a can, scrape plates into the trash, and keep peels, rice and pasta out of the disposal. If the sink is already slow, have it cleaned before guests arrive.

Fort Worth neighborhoods including Riverside, Oakhurst, Six Points, Northside, Fairmount, Near Southside and downtown, plus Haltom City, North Richland Hills, Saginaw, Lake Worth, Benbrook, Kennedale and Burleson. Restaurants and businesses: see commercial plumbing.