Same-day service, upfront pricing and professional solutions for clogged drains, sewer backups, root intrusion and recurring drainage problems.
See all drain & sewer services Serving Seattle, Bellevue, Shoreline & the Eastside
One local crew, one focus: clogged drains, sewer backups and root-blocked main lines — diagnosed on camera, then cleared the same day.
Licensed, Bonded & Insured
The Drain Authority is a locally owned, owner-operated drain and sewer company serving Seattle and the Eastside. We clear clogged kitchen, bath and floor drains, hydro jet grease and root intrusion out of main lines, and inspect sewer lines with HD cameras — 8 AM to 8 PM every day, at a flat price quoted before any work begins.
Much of the city sits on clay and cast-iron laterals installed decades before anyone was thinking about garbage disposals. Add mature trees hunting for water at every pipe joint and a wet season that keeps the soil saturated for months, and a line that drains fine in August starts backing up in November.
A gurgling toilet, a floor drain holding water, or a sewer smell that returns after heavy rain usually isn't a one-time clogged drain. It's a line losing diameter — which is a sewer camera inspection, not a guessing game.
A rooter cable punches through a blockage and restores flow fast. For one soft clog in an accessible line, that's the right call and the cheaper one. Hydro jetting is different: it scours the pipe wall back to full diameter, which is what hardened grease, mineral scale and root hair require. Cabling those only buys a few months.
Cast iron that's already scaled over often needs pipe descaling before it will hold. We camera the line first, show you what's on the screen, and recommend the smaller fix when the smaller fix will hold.
It depends on three things: where we can access the line, how far in the blockage sits, and what's causing it. You get a flat number before we start — not an hourly meter, and never a trip or diagnostic fee.
Be careful with the ultra-cheap ads. A $99 special typically covers a cable through an easy ground-level cleanout and nothing else; the moment there's no cleanout, roots, or a second access point, the price changes. We break down exactly how that works in our guide to the $99 drain cleaning scam.
If two or more fixtures back up at once — a tub filling while the washer drains, or a basement floor drain surfacing when you flush — the blockage is past the branch lines and out in the main. That's main sewer line cleaning territory, and it's worth handling before the next heavy rain rather than after it.
Same-day availability across Seattle and the Eastside — see all service areas.
Calls get the earliest same-day windows. Online booking is open around the clock.
Six core services, one local crew, and a camera on every main line. Find the one that matches what you're seeing — or call and we'll work it out with you.
Drain cleaning clears a single blocked fixture line — kitchen, bath, laundry or floor drain — and confirms the line is open before we leave the house.
Hydro jetting uses 4,000 PSI water to scour grease, scale and root hair off the pipe wall, returning a Seattle side sewer to its original diameter.
Rooter service runs a mechanical cable through the line to cut a blockage open and restore flow the same day you call, anywhere in the city.
A sewer camera inspection sends an HD push camera down the side sewer to find cracks, bellies, offsets and root intrusion, and to mark where they sit.
Main line cleaning clears the single pipe carrying every fixture in the building out to the public main — the pipe Seattle calls your side sewer.
Pipe descaling uses a rotating chain knocker to strip mineral scale and rust off the inside wall of cast iron pipe — no excavation, no permit, no yard torn up.
Drain work here isn't the same as drain work anywhere else. Four things about Seattle plumbing change what a backup costs you and who is responsible for fixing it.
In Seattle, the pipe carrying wastewater from your building to the public sewer is called a side sewer, and the property owner owns and maintains all of it — including the length running under the street, right up to the connection at the city main. Seattle Public Utilities maintains the main; everything before it is on you.
SPU counts more than 5,000 miles of privately owned side sewer pipe under the city. In the older neighborhoods a large share of that is clay or cast iron, laid long before anyone was running a garbage disposal or a high-efficiency washer into it.
Shared side sewers are common here, especially on older platted lots. When the line is shared, so is the responsibility — which is worth knowing before repairs are scoped rather than after. A camera pass shows where your line ties into your neighbor's.
In parts of the city, wastewater and stormwater travel in the same pipes. That's why a marginal line handles August fine and surcharges the first week of real rain. If your backups are seasonal, the line was already losing capacity.
If sewage is actively backing up, call SPU at (206) 386-1800 alongside your plumber. They'll confirm whether the problem is on the public side before you pay anyone to dig on the private side.
Match what's happening at your place to the service that fixes it.
Seattle restaurants, apartment buildings, retail and offices run on different equipment and a different schedule. We handle grease traps, floor drains and high-volume lines before you open or after you close — whichever keeps the doors working.
Commercial ServicesPhones are answered 8 AM to 8 PM, seven days a week. Same-day slots fill quickly — calling gets you the earliest window.
(206) 590-1455What happens in the minutes before a plumber arrives decides how much a backup actually costs you. This is what helps — and what makes it worse.
Including the dishwasher and the washing machine. Every fixture in the building empties into the same blocked line, and a wash cycle finishing mid-backup is how water reaches the floor.
It almost never moves a main-line blockage, and it sits in the standing water waiting for whoever opens the line. If you've already poured some in, say so before we start — it changes how we work.
A capped pipe at ground level, usually near the foundation or out toward the street. Knowing where yours is often shortens the visit, and on some properties it's the difference between an easy access point and a hard one.
Backups surface at the lowest opening first — a basement floor drain, a laundry hookup, a garage drain. Move anything stored nearby before it becomes part of the cleanup.
Describe what you're seeing on the phone and we'll tell you whether it reads like a branch line or the main before anything gets quoted.
Every figure below comes from our own job records — not an industry average.
Licensed, bonded and insured in Washington State — WA #DRAINDA756MA. More about the owner
The whole visit in order, with honest timings and exactly what we need from you. No four-hour windows, no vague "we'll be out sometime Tuesday."
We ask which fixtures are affected, whether anything gurgles, and if you know where your cleanout is. That's usually enough to tell whether this is one branch line or the main before a truck moves.
You get a window rather than a whole day. Morning calls generally go out the same afternoon; late-day calls get the first slot the following morning.
The truck parks as close to the access point as the street allows — a real consideration on older Seattle blocks with no driveway. Floors get covered before any equipment comes inside.
We work from the access point nearest the blockage rather than from the fixture. That single choice is usually what keeps a two-hour job from becoming a four-hour one.
You get the footage, what we found, and a written note on anything worth watching. Then the work area goes back the way we found it.
The practical ones nobody puts on a website.
Someone 18 or older should be there at the start to point out the affected fixtures and approve the price. After that you don't need to hover — on a main line, most of the work happens outside at the cleanout.
Most of the time the work never comes inside at all. When it has to, floors get covered first and the cable stays contained. Wastewater goes back down the line, not onto your floor.
Plenty of older properties have one that's buried, paved over, or was never installed. We can work through a pulled toilet or a roof vent instead. It takes longer, and you'll hear that before we start rather than after.
Then you shouldn't be paying us to fix it. A camera pass shows where your line ends and the public main begins. In Seattle that boundary sits further out than most people expect — Seattle Public Utilities explains where private responsibility stops. If the blockage is past that point, we'll tell you to call the city instead of quoting you a repair.
As soon as the line is verified clear, which is usually before we've finished loading the truck. If we found damage that needs a repair, you'll get specifics on what's safe to run until it's handled.
No. The schedule runs 8 AM to 8 PM seven days a week, and a Saturday evening slot is priced the same as a Tuesday morning one.
In Seattle you can, and it's free. The city keeps a side sewer card for most parcels — a hand-drawn record showing where the line leaves the building, the route it takes to the main, and often the material and depth. Look yours up by address in Seattle's Side Sewer Cards and Maps viewer. Old cards can be rough, but they beat guessing, and they regularly turn up a cleanout nobody knew was there.
Not for cleaning, cabling, jetting or a camera pass — none of that breaks ground. If a repair follows and excavation is involved, Washington law requires a free utility locate at least two business days beforehand, and that gets arranged before a shovel moves. The state's Call Before You Dig page explains how the locate works and what the paint marks mean.
A single slow bathroom sink is often just the pop-up assembly or a packed p-trap — twenty minutes with a bucket and you're done. A gurgle with nothing draining slowly can be a blocked vent, not a blocked line. A toilet that runs constantly but flushes fine is a fill valve, not a sewer problem. And a jammed disposal is a jammed disposal.
None of those need a truck. Describe what you're seeing on the phone and we'll say so — we'd rather talk you through a twenty-minute fix than bill you for a visit you didn't need.
Two minutes on the phone is usually enough to tell you what you're dealing with.
The more specific the description, the better the answer. Four details tell us almost everything before anyone drives out.
Messages go straight to the owner and are answered in order. If water is actively backing up, call — that's how same-day windows get assigned.
Tell us which fixtures are affected and roughly when it started. That's usually enough for a straight answer and a flat price — no trip fee either way.
Fourteen cities and neighborhoods, one crew, and the same equipment on every truck. Find your city below and go straight to the service you need.
Pricing does not change by city. The same flat-rate quote applies whether the job is in Seattle, Renton or Lake Forest Park — no travel surcharge, no zone pricing, and no trip fee for coming out to look.
Mostly mid-century housing on modest lots, which means original laterals still in the ground and cleanouts that got landscaped over two owners ago.
Mountlake Terrace
Renton runs from Highlands-era housing to new valley construction, so the right approach changes block to block. We camera first rather than assume.
Renton
Big lots and mature evergreens are a root problem waiting to happen. A lot of Bellevue work is cutting roots out of a line that ran fine five years ago.
Bellevue
Flat blocks and long shallow runs out to the main. Easy lines to camera, and easy lines to lose to root intrusion at the joints.
ShorelineEvery service, in every area we cover.
Outside Seattle, the rules change. Who owns which length of pipe, whether a cleanout is required, and which department issues a permit all vary from one city to the next. We work to whichever jurisdiction the property sits in — and we'll tell you which one that is before anything gets scheduled.
Reviews are the one part of this page we don't write. These come straight from Google, unedited, from people whose lines we actually opened.
Had us out to clear a line? Leaving a review takes a minute and it's how most of our neighbors find us.
Our equipment, our truck, our crew, in actual Seattle-area homes and businesses. Not a single stock photo on this page.
Every main-line job gets a camera pass, and the footage is yours. Most people find out their pipe is in better shape than they feared.
Practical guidance on drain clogs, sewer line problems, hydro jetting, and when to call a professional — written for Seattle homeowners.
We cover the Seattle metro from Lake Forest Park and Edmonds in the north, south to Renton, and east across the lake to Redmond and Woodinville. If your street sits inside the outline below, you're inside the same-day window.
How early your window lands depends on where the truck finishes its previous job. Anywhere on this map, a morning call almost always gets a slot the same day — the closer in you are, the earlier that slot tends to be.
520 and I-90 at 4 PM are real, and pretending otherwise is how a two-hour window turns into a five-hour one. Eastside afternoon calls get sequenced around the crossings so the time we give you holds.
Call anyway. If we can reach you we'll say so, and if we can't we'll tell you that on the phone and point you toward someone who can — rather than book the job and cancel it the morning of.
Looking for your city specifically? The full service area directory breaks out every city and every service we run there.
Ten questions we field on the phone every week — answered the way we'd answer them if you called right now, with no sales pitch attached.
Most Seattle homes do well on a preventive main line cleaning every 18 to 24 months. Lines with known root intrusion, scaling cast iron, or a history of backups usually need it annually. A line that has never given trouble and cameras clean can often go three years or more. The footage sets the interval, not the calendar.
Hydro jetting typically holds one to three years, depending on what caused the blockage. Kitchen grease rebuilds the fastest. Roots come back on their own schedule, usually inside 12 to 24 months, because jetting cuts them at the pipe wall but doesn't close the crack they're entering through.
Hydro jetting will not damage a structurally sound pipe, including old cast iron and clay, because the water works against the pipe wall rather than through it. It can open up a section that was already cracked or badly deteriorated — which is exactly why the line gets cameraed first. If the footage shows a failing pipe, jetting isn't the recommendation.
A sewage smell indoors means sewer gas is getting past a water seal somewhere. The usual causes are a dried-out P-trap in a fixture nobody uses, a blocked vent stack, biofilm coating the inside of the drain, or a break in the line under the house. Refilling a trap takes ten seconds — if the smell returns within a day or two, the cause is further down.
Roots can be cut out, but they can't be permanently removed while the crack or open joint they're entering through is still there. Cutting and jetting restore flow; the roots grow back toward the same opening, typically within 12 to 24 months. A permanent fix means repairing that section of pipe, and a camera inspection shows which situation you're in.
A clog clears and stays clear. A break backs up again on a cycle that gets shorter each time. Other signs point to a break rather than a blockage: a patch of lawn greener or soggier than the rest, a dip or sinkhole along the line's path, rodents turning up indoors, or a sewer smell in the yard. A camera settles it in minutes.
Standard homeowners policies generally don't cover sewer backups, and they usually don't cover the sewer line itself. Backup damage typically requires a separate water backup endorsement; the pipe typically requires a service line endorsement. Because Seattle property owners own the side sewer all the way to the city main, that second one matters more here than in cities where the utility owns part of the run. Check your declarations page.
A sewer scope is worth it on any Seattle house built before roughly 1980, and it is not part of a standard home inspection. The scope shows whether the side sewer is clay, concrete, cast iron or plastic, whether roots are already in it, and whether any section has collapsed or bellied. The buyer inherits the whole line to the city main, so it's the cheapest way to find out what you're inheriting.
A hand auger will clear a simple hair clog in a bathroom sink or tub, and that's worth trying first. Chemical cleaners mostly don't work on a real blockage — they pool on top of it, generate heat, and make the line hazardous for whoever opens it next. Baking soda and vinegar clears nothing beyond a slow trap. If two fixtures are affected, no consumer product reaches that far.
Most Seattle food service kitchens need the grease line jetted every three to six months, and high-volume kitchens closer to monthly. Menu and volume drive the interval far more than the pipe does. A line that backs up mid-service costs more in one night than a year of maintenance, which is why commercial accounts are scheduled rather than called in.
Ask it on the phone. Two minutes of description is usually enough for a straight answer, and if it turns out you don't need us, you'll hear that too. More in the full drain & sewer FAQ.
