FAQs

Sometimes. Pull the trap under the sink into a bucket and clean it out — kitchen clogs are usually grease and food packed into the first few feet of pipe. A cup plunger over the drain, with the other side of a double sink plugged, is worth a try too.

What tells you to stop: water coming back up out of the dishwasher, both sides of the sink filling, or the same clog returning within a week or two. That means the blockage is further down the branch line than a plunger or a hand snake will reach, and it needs a cable.

We'd rather you didn't. Caustic cleaners rarely clear a real clog — they sit on top of it and turn your standing water into something that can burn skin and eyes. That's now what your plumber has to reach into.

They also chew on older pipe, rubber gaskets and the good bacteria in a septic system. Hot water and a plunger first; a cable second. If you've already poured some in, tell us when we arrive so we can protect ourselves.

Because the water has nowhere else to go. A washer dumps a lot of water fast, and if the shared line downstream is partly blocked, that water backs up and finds the lowest opening in the house — usually a tub or a basement floor drain. It's a symptom of a main or branch line restriction, not a tub problem. Cleaning the tub drain won't fix it.

Two common culprits. One: a trap that's dried out — common in a guest bath or a floor drain nobody uses — which lets sewer gas straight into the room. Run water down it for a minute and see if the smell goes. Two: a buildup of grease and biofilm coating the inside of the pipe, which smells regardless of how much water you run. That one needs to be scoured out, not masked.

First, make sure you're using a flange plunger — the kind with a rubber sleeve that folds out to seal the bowl outlet. The flat cup style is for sinks and will never build pressure in a toilet.

If a proper plunger and twenty firm strokes don't move it, stop. Either something solid is lodged in the trap of the fixture (a toy, a bottle cap, a scrub sponge) and the toilet needs to be pulled, or the blockage is downstream and every other fixture will start acting up next. Both are calls, not projects.

It's an early warning, and it's worth acting on. Gurgling means air is being pulled through the trap because the line can't breathe or can't drain freely — a partial blockage downstream, or a blocked vent on the roof. Right now it's a noise. Left alone it usually becomes a backup, and backups have a habit of choosing holidays.

No. They flush — that's the only part of the claim that's true. They don't break down, so they catch on any joint, offset or root intrusion in your line and knit together into a rope. Same story for paper towels, "septic-safe" cat litter, dental floss, cotton rounds and grease. Toilet paper and what your body puts there. That's the list.

That it's not any one fixture. When the whole house slows down, the restriction is in the main line that carries everything out to the sewer or septic — and every drain shares it. Don't spend the weekend snaking sinks one at a time. That's a main line call, and it's the one that turns into a basement full of sewage if it's ignored.

Usually not. Roots find their way in through joints and cracks because your line is the wettest, richest thing in the soil — and in older Spokane neighborhoods with big mature trees, that's normal. A cutting head on a cable clears them and gets you flowing again.

What matters is what the camera shows afterward. Roots at a joint in otherwise sound pipe means put it on a maintenance schedule — many homes get cleaned once a year and never think about it again. A collapsed or badly offset section is a different conversation, and we'll show you the footage rather than ask you to take our word for it.

A cable punches a hole through the blockage and cuts roots. It's fast, it's the right tool for most emergency backups, and it gets the water moving today.

Hydro jetting uses high-pressure water to scour the pipe wall back to bare — grease, sludge, scale, the film that a cable slides right past. It's what you want for a grease-heavy kitchen line, a restaurant, or a line that keeps clogging every few months. Often the honest answer is cable now to get you draining, camera to see why, jet after that if the pipe warrants it.

As a rule, the side sewer from your house to the city main is yours — including the part buried under your parkway and the street. The city's responsibility starts at their main. When a backup could be either, a camera run tells you where the problem sits before anyone starts arguing about who pays for it.

Every three to five years for a typical household is the usual guidance, but it really depends on tank size and how many people are using it — a family of five on a small tank is a different schedule than a couple on a big one. Signs you're overdue: slow drains everywhere, gurgling, wet or unusually green patches over the drainfield, or a smell in the yard. Pumping on schedule is cheap. Replacing a drainfield is not.

You're in good company — lids get buried under sod, flower beds and, memorably, one deck. We locate tanks: we run a transmitter down the line and trace it from the surface, so we find the lid without turning your yard into a test-pit farm. Worth doing before you need an emergency pump-out at nine on a Sunday night.

Almost never. The floor drain is the lowest opening in the system, so it's where a blocked main line surfaces first — it's the messenger, not the culprit. Clearing the main is what stops it. And if the drain has been dry for years, check the trap afterward: a dried trap is the reason a basement smells even when nothing is backing up.

Test it, don't hope. Pour a few buckets of water into the pit until the float rises — the pump should kick on, move the water out and shut off cleanly. If it hums without pumping, runs constantly, or the discharge line outside is frozen or crushed, deal with it now. A dead sump pump is discovered at the worst possible moment, which around here is the first warm week after a hard freeze.