Is this you?
Signs it’s the kitchen line
The kitchen sink drains slowly
Everything else in the house is fine. That’s the kitchen branch.
It came back weeks after a snaking
The hole through the grease closed up again. That’s the classic sign.
The dishwasher backs into the sink
They share a line, and a narrowed pipe can’t take both.
How we do it
How we clean a kitchen line
Find where it’s narrowed
Grease builds along the length of the line, not at one spot.
Jet the wall
The nozzle scours the full circumference and the flow carries the grease out.
Check the result
On older lines, a camera run confirms the wall is clean all the way.
What to avoid after
Plain advice: grease in the trash, not the sink; go easy on the disposal.
What it costs
What a kitchen line costs
The visit price is given on the phone. Jetting is quoted by the length of the line before we start.
Access
Under the sink, at a cleanout, or through a wall: easy access keeps it quick.
Length of the line
A kitchen at the far end of the house has a longer, flatter run to clean.
Whether it’s the main
If the grease has reached the main line, that’s a bigger clean, and we’ll show you why.
The details
For the people who want every step
Why the kitchen is its own problem
Everything that goes down a kitchen sink is warm. Fat and oil stay liquid all the way through the trap and then cool on the pipe wall, a film at a time, catching coffee grounds and rice and anything fibrous on the way past. The line does not block at a point; it narrows along its length, which is a completely different failure from a root ball or a dropped object.
That is why a cable disappoints here. It bores a hole through the middle of the deposit, the sink runs beautifully for the rest of the day, and the hole closes again with the next few weeks of washing up. Nobody has done anything dishonest; the wrong tool was used on a wall problem.
What works, and what does not
- Jetting works, because the nozzle scours the wall for the full circumference and the flow carries the material out rather than leaving it further down the line.
- Enzyme and bacterial products have a real and modest role in slowing build-up on a line that has already been cleaned. They do not open a blocked one, and we will not sell them as though they do.
- Caustic openers are the wrong thing in a kitchen line, and the person who eventually has to open the trap is going to meet what you poured in.
- Hot water and detergent moves grease a few feet down the pipe. It does not remove it from the system, and on a long flat run it makes the far end worse.
A disposal does not make food disappear
A garbage disposal grinds; it does not digest. The pieces are smaller and they still have to travel a horizontal pipe with an eighth of an inch of fall per foot, and they stick to whatever is already on the wall. Coffee grounds, egg shell, rice, pasta and anything stringy are the reliable offenders. None of this means the disposal is broken.
The one place a schedule is honest
We say elsewhere on this site — firmly — that a recurring cabling on a residential root problem is a subscription rather than a service, because the underlying defect never gets addressed. A commercial kitchen is genuinely different. There is no defect to repair: the line is sound and the building's own daily output is the cause, and it will be the cause again next quarter whatever anybody does. A scheduled jetting there is maintenance in the ordinary sense, the same way changing a filter is.
What still has to be true is that the schedule is set by how fast that line loads up, measured on camera, and revisited — not sold as a standard interval to everybody with a kitchen. And on a commercial site the grease interceptor is part of the same conversation: a trap that is not being pumped on its own schedule will keep filling the line no matter how often the line is cleaned.
Questions
What people ask us about this
Does hot water and soap clear grease?
It moves grease a few feet down the pipe. It doesn’t remove it, and on a long flat run it makes the far end worse.
Is my garbage disposal the problem?
A disposal grinds; it doesn’t digest. Coffee grounds, eggshell, rice, pasta and anything stringy still have to travel a nearly flat pipe, and they stick to what’s already there.
Do enzyme products work?
They have a modest place slowing build-up on a line that’s already been cleaned. They don’t open a blocked one, and we won’t sell them as if they do.
Want somebody to look at it properly?
Tell us what it’s doing. The office calls you back the same working day to agree a time. Nothing is priced before somebody has seen it, and you keep whatever we write down.
Other work