A kitchen sink holding gray water, a tub that gulps every time the washer drains, a toilet that won’t go down before work: that’s the drain cleaning Chicago Plumbworks sets up for bungalows, two-flats, greystones and garden units across the city. You call, we set the visit, and a licensed plumber clears the line. A clog in one fixture’s branch usually comes out with a cable. When every drain is backing up at once, the blockage is further down, in the sewer line that runs out to the street.
Is it one slow drain or every drain?
Start by counting how many drains are acting up. That one answer tells your plumber where to put the cable.
One slow fixture means the clog is in that fixture’s trap or in the short branch behind the wall. Kitchen sinks clog with grease and food scraps, bathroom sinks and tubs with hair and soap, and a toilet usually has something lodged in its own bend.
When two or more drains slow down together, or one pushes water up while another runs, the blockage is in a line they share. In a Chicago basement it shows first at the lowest opening on that line: the floor drain, a basement toilet or the laundry tub. Water from the floors above has nowhere else to go.
| What you see | Where the clog usually is | What clears it |
|---|---|---|
| One sink or tub slow, everything else fine | That fixture’s trap or branch | A cable run from the fixture |
| Toilet won’t go down, sinks drain fine | The toilet’s own trapway | A toilet auger, or pulling the toilet |
| Tub gurgles when the toilet flushes | The shared branch or the sewer line | Rodding from the cleanout |
| Floor drain fills when the washer empties | The sewer line past the floor drain | Rodding the sewer line, then a camera |
| Floor drain fills only in heavy rain | No clog: the street sewer is full | Flood control, not drain cleaning |
If water comes up the floor drain during a downpour with nothing running in the house, rodding won’t stop it, and water in the basement during storms has its own causes and fixes.
A garden-unit bathroom can look clogged when it isn’t. If the bathroom is below the sewer, it can’t drain by gravity. The toilet empties into an ejector pit and a pump lifts the waste up to the line, and when that pump stops, the toilet backs up like a clog. Say so on the call if the bathroom is down there.
Emergency drain calls
Sewage coming up a floor drain or a basement toilet, the only toilet in the building blocked, or water still rising after everyone has stopped using the fixtures: call as soon as you can. The page on plumbing problems that can’t wait covers what counts as an emergency and what to do first. A bathroom sink that takes ten minutes to empty can wait until morning, as long as the other fixtures still drain.
Overflowing toilet: first steps
Short answer
Stop the water before anything else. Turn the valve on the wall or floor behind the toilet clockwise until it stops. If it won’t turn, lift the tank lid and hold the float up so the tank stops filling. Don’t flush again. If the bowl keeps rising with the supply shut, the water is coming back from the drain line.
A toilet that bubbles and fills when someone runs the tub is pushing back against a blocked line too, and every flush adds more water behind the clog.
If the valve behind the toilet is seized or drips when you touch it, close the main shutoff instead. Shutting off the water at the main is laid out by house type, since a bungalow and a greystone hide it in different places.
Water from the drain is sewage
That includes water that looks clear. Put on rubber gloves and boots before you mop, keep kids and pets out of the room, and wash your hands with soap and clean water when you’re done. Move rugs, towels and anything else on the floor that you want to keep.
Rodding vs hydro jetting
Rodding and jetting do different things to the inside of a pipe, and the kind of pipe sets which one your plumber reaches for.
Rodding
A rodding machine spins a steel cable with a cutting head through the line. The head chops through the clog, breaks up grease deposits and cuts roots off at the pipe wall. It opens a path fast from the cleanout, a sink trap or a pulled toilet, but it loosens sand, grit and the grease film on the walls more than it removes them, so a greasy line can narrow again.
Hydro jetting
A jetter pushes water at high pressure through a hose with a nozzle whose jets point backward and to the sides. The jets pull the hose up the line and wash the walls as it goes, taking grease build-up and sludge out along with the clog. Hydro jetting is the better tool for a kitchen line that keeps closing up, or a sewer line that’s been rodded through roots and still drains slow.
The pipe in an older Chicago house decides it
Inside an older Chicago building, the stack and drains are usually cast iron, since Chicago has held on to lead-and-oakum cast iron longer than any other big US city. Outside the foundation, the house sewer may be clay tile: short sections laid end to end. The City’s own sewer program still calls these lines drain tiles.
A jetter is fine in sound pipe of either kind and risky in damaged pipe, and you can’t see the damage from the basement. On an older line the camera goes in after rodding, so your plumber picks the method from the footage and you see it too.
Grease, wipes and roots in older Chicago lines
Grease goes down the sink warm and liquid, then cools and sticks to the pipe wall. In a two-flat where the kitchens stack one above the other, the upstairs unit’s pan grease rides down the same line as yours. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the agency that cleans the city’s wastewater, asks people to keep grease out of drains.
MWRD also says “flushable” wipes don’t break apart in the pipes the way toilet paper does. A wad of them catches on the first rough joint or root in the line and builds from there until the cable pulls it out.
Roots are a sewer-line problem. The City’s Bureau of Forestry says a parkway tree doesn’t crack the pipe; its roots find a leak that’s already there, at an aging joint or a break. Rodding cuts them back, and the camera run afterward shows whether that joint needs repair.
Keeping drains clear
- Pour cooled grease into a can and throw it out. Wipe greasy pans with a paper towel before they go in the sink.
- Put a strainer in the tub and shower to catch hair.
- Toilet paper is the only paper that goes in the toilet; wipes and paper towels go in the trash, whatever the package says.
- Keep the cleanout reachable. When it’s sealed behind a finished wall or blocked by storage, rodding takes longer.
- Leave the floor drain uncovered. One under a rug or a stack of boxes gives you no warning.
If the camera found roots, put the line on a regular rodding cycle instead of waiting for the floor drain to tell you.
Yard pooling, or a crushed pipe on camera?
When rain pools by the foundation and the basement gets wet every storm, have the catch basin and overhead sewer setup checked before booking another rodding. A camera run that shows a crushed or collapsed sewer under the yard means that section of pipe has to be replaced, dug or trenchless.