Why some drains keep coming back
A cable through a clog leaves a slot. Water passes again, yet the bulk of the buildup is still on the walls, collecting more until the line closes up. That is the reason we film before picking a tool. On the monitor, kitchen grease looks different from hair, from mineral scale, from the rust that grows inside old cast iron, from roots and from broken pipe. A soft stoppage close to a fixture is cable work. Grease, scale and roots go to the jetter. A cracked hub or a dip in the line is a repair, and no amount of cleaning makes it go away.
The jetter's nozzle fires water backward under high pressure. That spray scours the pipe on all sides, shears roots where they enter and flushes what it loosens toward the sewer main. Beneath the Craftsman and Spanish Revival houses of Highland Park, West Adams, Mid-City and Silver Lake, drains are usually cast iron and the lateral is clay, laid in short sections whose joints admit the roots of street trees that have had a century to grow. On a raised foundation, much of that cast iron can be looked at from the crawl space. Water here is hard, and its scale narrows both kinds of pipe. The footage sets how much pressure a given line can take. In older apartment buildings in Koreatown and Hollywood, the usual trouble is grease from many kitchens meeting in one stack.
The private lateral runs from the house to the public sewer, and maintaining it falls to the owner; inside the city of Los Angeles, LA Sanitation and Environment (LASAN) looks after the main in the street. Our work covers that lateral: cleaning it, filming it and fixing it. On hillside lots it can be long and steep, and a house sitting below the street may lift its wastewater with an ejector pump before it ever reaches the lateral. Where a building shares stacks, a clog can surface first in someone else's tub, so we work out which line is plugged and which units feed it before anything starts. The final camera run is recorded so you can compare the clean pipe with the clog you saw at the start.
Included on every Los Angeles drain call
- Every drain job under our C-36 license, CSLB #1131308
- 24-hour emergency response once sewage starts coming up in a tub or toilet
- No cleaning begins until you sign off on the written estimate
- Our written workmanship warranty on the completed work
A drain heading for trouble
- A shower or tub still holding water well after it is turned off
- Several fixtures slowing together, beginning with the lowest
- A toilet that gurgles when the tub, the washer or a neighbor's fixture drains
- A drain that was cleared last month and is plugging again
- Sewer smell indoors, around a floor drain or at the yard cleanout
- Mature street trees above an old clay lateral, and a history of backups
Camera before any tool
You stand beside the monitor as the camera moves down the pipe, seeing the blockage and the state of the pipe ahead of it and behind it.
A tool matched to the clog
Soft stoppages in a fixture line get a cable. Grease, roots, mineral scale and rusted cast iron call for the jetter.
Filmed a second time
A second run with the camera confirms the jet cleaned the pipe wall all the way around instead of leaving a tunnel through the middle.
Keeping it clear
Before leaving, the plumber goes over what should stay out of the kitchen and bathroom drains, and sets a maintenance schedule when big trees stand over the lateral or a restaurant kitchen feeds it.
How we handle drains in Los Angeles
Based in Los Angeles, we take drain calls from all over the county. Half-cleaned pipe plugs again, so four practices are part of every drain job.
You see the before and the after
Footage at the start shows the blockage; footage at the end shows the open pipe. You judge the result with your own eyes.
The full pipe wall cleared
The jet peels grease, scale and roots away from the whole circumference of the pipe. A cable cannot do that; it leaves a hole down the center.
Water, not caustic chemicals
The jet uses plain water. For upkeep we suggest an enzyme treatment over caustic drain openers, which eat at old cast iron and fittings.
Broken pipe reported, not cleaned again
If the footage turns up a cracked hub, a separated clay joint or a belly that explains the repeat clogs, you hear about it first and are not charged for another cleaning that would not hold.
What changes the price of a drain job
Access comes first. A kitchen trap, an outdoor cleanout or a tub reached through its overflow is easy. Plenty of older Los Angeles houses were built without a lateral cleanout, which leaves a roof vent or a pulled toilet as the way in and means more setup. Under a raised foundation, a cleanout can sometimes be added in the crawl space. In an apartment building, the clog may sit in a stack shared by several units, and that can mean working with the owner or the manager.
Then the method and the line. Cabling one fixture is a lighter job than jetting the full lateral out to the main. A root-filled clay lateral is filmed before anything else. Long laterals on hillside lots take more effort to locate and clear, and an ejector pump system adds its own basin and check valve to inspect. A broken section found on camera becomes a separate repair, and lateral work inside the city needs an LADBS permit; other cities issue their own.
When the camera has shown what is in the line, the price is written down, and you decide before any work starts.
Drain cleaning across the county
Los Angeles is our base, and drain calls from every city in the county are dispatched from our Los Angeles location.
Central Los Angeles
Rooted clay laterals and cast iron under the bungalows of Highland Park, Eagle Rock, West Adams and Mid-City, grease-heavy stacks in the apartment buildings of Koreatown, Hollywood and Echo Park, and long, steep laterals with ejector pumps in the Hollywood Hills and Silver Lake.
The Valley, Burbank, Glendale and San Fernando
Kitchen lines and cast iron under slab ranch houses in Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood, the older flats of Burbank, the 1920s houses of Glendale's Rossmoyne, and the clay laterals beneath San Fernando's 1920s to 1950s homes.
The Westside and Inglewood
Shared stacks in the apartment and condo buildings of Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Culver City, big lots and mature trees over clay laterals in Beverly Hills, and the 1920s to 1950s houses of Inglewood's Morningside Park.
The rest of the county
Drain calls from Long Beach, the South Bay, the San Gabriel Valley, Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley go out from our Los Angeles location as well.
Drain questions, answered
Pipe with a sound wall takes jetting without harm. Crumbling pipe does not, and the camera's first look is how we tell the two apart: thin cast iron or an opened clay joint gets marked for repair, not jetted.
A cable bores a path through the clog so water can get by, while a jetter scrubs the pipe end to end. A cabled line often clogs again at the same joint; a jetted one generally stays clear much longer.
Old cast iron and century-old clay are usually safe to jet after the camera confirms their condition; where the wall has thinned, the pressure is turned down. A clay joint split by roots gets repaired instead.
Every drain job is priced on its own. The price depends on which line is blocked, how it is reached, whether a cable or the jetter does the work and how much searching the problem takes. After the camera run you get the figure in writing, and nothing begins until you accept it.
Most houses never need scheduled jetting. The exceptions are restaurant kitchens, apartment buildings where many kitchens share a stack, and older houses with big street trees over a clay lateral. For those, a scheduled cleaning every year, or every six months, stops roots and grease before they close the pipe again.
24/7 Emergency Plumbing
Burst lines, slab leaks and backed-up stacks, day or night.
Water Heater Repair & Install
Tank heaters fixed, or replaced with two straps and a permit.
Sewer Repair & Repipe
Clay laterals repaired or lined, and old supply lines repiped.
Gas Leak Detection & Repair
Gas piping leaks located, fixed and pressure tested.
Sewage coming up: call at any hour
Someone answers all night long. Wastewater rising through a drain anywhere in Los Angeles County gets 24-hour emergency response from our Los Angeles location.