Water backing up into the tub when the toilet flushes, or more than one drain in the house acting up at once.
The signature of a main line clog is that it shows up somewhere other than where the water went in. Flush the toilet and the tub backs up. Run the washing machine and the shower drain gurgles. That happens because the blockage sits downstream of where all the branch lines join, so anything sent down any fixture has nowhere to go but back up through the lowest drain in the house. A clog in a single branch line, by contrast, only ever affects that one fixture.
Clearing a main line means going in through the main cleanout — the capped pipe usually near the foundation or in a basement floor — with a cable heavy enough to reach fifty feet or more and a cutting head sized for a four-inch line, not the light cable used on a sink. If the stoppage clears but comes back within a short stretch of time, or if it turns out to be roots or a genuine blockage rather than paper and waste, that is usually the point to put a camera down the line before running the cable a third time.
Tell us which fixture and how bad, and we'll match you with someone who runs the right tool the first time.
Get a Drain ClearedTell us which drain and how bad — we'll follow up to figure out whether it needs a cable, a jetter, or a camera first.
