CLOGGED KITCHEN SINK — CLEARED IN ONE VISIT

When your kitchen sink stops draining, it's almost always grease, food scraps, and soap that have built up in the horizontal run between the trap and the wall. Hot water and dish soap go in for years; the grease cools, hardens, and slowly closes off the pipe. Most kitchen clogs are between 18 inches and 6 feet downstream of the trap — close enough that a hand cable or small drum auger clears them on a first pass. Hydro jetting handles the harder cases.

Double basin sinks are the most common call. Water backs up into one side when the other drains, or both sides stand full. That's a clog past the tee where the two basins meet. We start at the trap, work outward with a 1/4" or 3/8" cable, and most jobs wrap in 30-60 minutes flat.

What we clear

1. Grease and soap buildup — by far the most common kitchen clog. Hot water + dish soap + 5 years = closed pipe.
2. Food scrap clogs — pasta, rice, potato peels, celery fiber, eggshells. Most belong in the trash, not the disposal.
3. Foreign objects — kid's toy, twist tie, broken glass, jewelry. We catch and remove rather than push downstream.
4. Garbage disposal clogs — usually upstream of the discharge tube; we clear without dismounting the unit.
5. Mainline backups — clog at the kitchen seems isolated but is actually downstream of the laundry too. We diagnose with camera.
6. Vent blockages — if water gurgles back up after draining, the vent is clogged, not the drain. Different fix.

What we use

• Sink auger / hand cable (1/4" - 3/8") — first attempt, 30-90 minute job
• Drum auger / power snake (1/2" - 3/4") — for stubborn clogs deeper in the line
• Mini hydro jet — high-pressure water for grease-coated pipe walls, restores full pipe diameter
• Camera inspection — if clogs keep coming back, $185 add-on confirms whether you have a slope, root, or pipe-wall issue

Kitchen clog issues in North Louisiana

Hard water is a factor here. Calcium scale builds inside the drain pipe just like it builds on faucets, and grease sticks to scale better than to clean copper or PVC. Soft-water homes have noticeably fewer kitchen clogs. We mention this only if you're getting repeated clogs — sometimes the right answer is a softener install, not a fifth snake job.

Older galvanized drain pipe. Homes built before 1970 sometimes still have galvanized drain lines that have rusted into a rough, pitted surface that grabs grease. If we snake your kitchen drain four times a year, the long-term answer is replacing the run with PVC, quoted by how accessible the line is.

What Mark Johnson & Sons does differently

Same-day scheduling. Flat-rate pricing — we tell you the price before any tools come off the truck. We don't upsell hydro jetting unless the cable can't clear it. All work comes with a 30-day warranty on the same clog. Classic Membership members get 15% off and priority dispatch.