Kitchen Drain Clogged
Kitchen drains block with grease rather than hair, and grease behaves differently. It leaves the sink as a warm liquid, cools in the horizontal run and coats the pipe, so the blockage is usually several feet away from the plughole.
What to do right now
Do these first. None of them need tools or plumbing knowledge, and they limit what this ends up costing you.
- Stop running hot water into itHot water melts grease at the sink and moves it further down the line, where it cools and sets somewhere less accessible. It feels like it is helping and it is making the eventual clear harder.
- Try a plunger, not chemicalsBlock the second bowl or the overflow first so the pressure goes down the line rather than out the side. A flat cup plunger and steady pressure beats anything you can pour in.
- Check the trapThe U bend under the sink unscrews. Put a bucket underneath first. If the blockage is there, this solves it in ten minutes for nothing.
Does this need a plumber tonight?
- The kitchen drain and other fixtures are both affected
- Water backing up into the sink from elsewhere
- Sewage smell rather than a food smell
- A single slow kitchen drain with everything else fine
- A blockage you have traced to the trap
- Slow drainage that still clears
Why grease is the problem
Because it is liquid when it goes in and solid when it settles. Everything else that enters the drain then catches on it.
The usual sequence is years of small amounts of cooking fat lining the horizontal run, gradually narrowing it, until one day something ordinary does not pass. The event that finally blocks it is rarely the cause of it.
Garbage disposals make it worse rather than better, because they turn food into a slurry that binds readily into greased pipe walls. Coffee grounds and rice are the two worst offenders.
- Cooking fat and oil poured down the sink
- Coffee grounds, which do not break down
- Rice and pasta, which swell
- Fibrous vegetable waste through a disposal
- Dishwasher discharge adding grease and starch
Why chemical cleaners are a bad idea here
They rarely clear an established grease blockage, they damage older pipe, and they leave a pipe full of caustic liquid for whoever opens the trap next.
On older Ogden homes with cast iron or partially degraded pipe, repeated chemical use genuinely accelerates failure. The cost of that is far higher than the cost of clearing the drain properly once.
What clearing a kitchen drain costs
[PLACEHOLDER: PRICING] Pending from the client.
A local blockage cleared through the trap or with a small machine is straightforward. If it turns out to be shared with other fixtures, it is main line work and priced differently.
Questions people ask about this
Is boiling water worth trying?
On a very early grease blockage, sometimes, followed immediately by cold water to carry it out rather than letting it reset. On an established one it moves the problem rather than removing it, and on plastic waste pipe it risks distorting joints.
Can I put fat down if I run hot water?
No. That is the single most common cause of the blockage you are reading about. Wipe pans out and bin it.
My disposal is humming but not turning.
It is jammed rather than blocked. Cut the power at the switch and the breaker before going anywhere near it, then use the hex key in the base to free it.
If that is not quite what you have
Not sure how urgent this is?
Describe what you can see and hear. We will tell you whether it needs someone tonight, and what to do in the meantime either way.
Or send it over
Four things and a photo.