Worth worrying about. One slow sink is a local clog, but several fixtures slow at once, a gurgling toilet, or water backing into the tub all point to the main line. Go easy on the water, because a blocked main comes back up at the lowest opening in the house.

The floor drain is the lowest opening, so it’s the first place a main line backup shows up. If water comes up when a toilet flushes, the main is the problem, so stop running water until it’s cleared. If it only smells, the trap has dried out and needs water.

Try it yourself first, we’d rather you keep the money. Use a flange plunger on a toilet and a flat cup on a sink, keep enough water over the cup so you’re pushing water, not air, and use steady strokes instead of one heroic shove. If it comes right back, call us.

They are. Those chemicals rarely remove a clog, they eat a channel through the middle and leave the rest on the pipe wall, so the drain runs a week and closes back tighter. They also generate heat that’s hard on older PVC joints. If you’ve already poured some in, tell us when we arrive.

Hair and soap, almost every time, and our hard water makes soap scum worse. Most of it sits in the first few inches, so pull the pop up stopper on a lavatory, or the strainer on a tub, and clean off what’s hanging there. It’s disgusting, and it’s usually the whole problem.

It is, and it’s the number one reason we end up in a kitchen drain. Bacon fat, drippings and the film off dishes go down warm, then cool and stick to the pipe wall past the sink. Pour cooled grease in a can and trash it. A line greased up for years needs jetting, not a cable, because a cable punches a hole and the grease closes in behind it.

Gurgling is air and a sewer smell is a trap that isn’t holding water. A gurgle means the line is partially blocked or a vent is plugged, and it’s often the first warning of a main line problem. A dried out P trap causes the smell, so pour a gallon down it.

Then the clog isn’t really the problem. Something in that line is catching what should wash past: a belly holding water, roots at a joint, or bad slope, and a camera will show you which. If the fix means opening a wall we set an access panel, and patching the wall is a drywall contractor’s job, not ours.

We can get them out, but not for good. Roots don’t break into a healthy pipe, they follow moisture out of a weeping joint, and Tulsa’s older neighborhoods are full of clay tile and cast iron. We cut them out with a cable and a root cutting head, then jet where the pipe can take it.

A cable, or snake, is a steel line we spin down the pipe with a cutting head, and it’s the right tool for hair, paper and a single stopped fixture. Hydro jetting uses high pressure water to scour the pipe wall clean, the call for grease, sludge and scale. We own our jetter, so nobody waits on a subcontractor.

For a hair clog in a bathroom sink, no. A camera earns its money when the same drain keeps stopping up, or before we jet a line nobody has seen inside. Run with a locating sonde, it marks the ground right over the problem. We turn the screen toward you while we’re in the line.

If you know where your cleanout is, tell us when you call, it makes the job faster and cheaper. It lets our cable or jetter go straight into the main instead of a roof vent or pulling a toilet. Older homes around here hide them well, so yours may be under a flower bed.

It depends on what we have to do, so we price it before we start. A single stopped fixture with easy access sits at the low end, and a main line where we pull a toilet or get on the roof takes more. Camera and locating are their own line items, unless we’re running a special.

Ask us to put water at it before we pack up. Water trickles through a hole punched in a clog and looks fixed for about a day, which is how the Saturday call happens. A drain that’s genuinely open takes volume, so fill a tub and dump the whole thing at once.