Almost every kitchen clog we cable has the same story behind it. Nobody dumped anything dramatic down the drain — it built up over months from ordinary cooking.
Grease is the main culprit, and it's the one people misunderstand most. Hot bacon fat or oil pours like a liquid, so it seems harmless going down. Twenty feet along the pipe it has cooled, and it congeals on the walls of the line. Every subsequent wash adds another layer, until the opening is a fraction of the pipe's diameter. Running hot water after it doesn't solve this; it just moves the problem further down where it's harder to reach.
Coffee grounds are second. They don't dissolve, they settle, and they pack together into a dense sludge — especially where grease has already coated the pipe. Eggshells behave similarly, and the membranes wrap around whatever else is in there.
Fibrous and starchy food is the third group: celery, artichoke leaves, onion skins, potato peels, rice, and pasta. Fibers tangle in the disposal and in the trap, and starches swell with water. A disposal grinds food, but it doesn't make any of it dissolve — everything it grinds still has to travel through your drain line.
In the bathroom, it's hair and soap. Bar soap in particular leaves a residue that hair binds to, and the two together build a mat inside the trap and the branch line.
The last one is the most expensive: so-called flushable wipes. They don't break down like toilet paper. They stay intact, catch on any rough spot in the line, and collect everything that comes after them. We pull them out of main lines regularly, and the same goes for paper towels, cotton swabs, and dental floss.
When something does clog, we'd ask you to skip the liquid drain cleaner. It often fails to clear the blockage, and then you have a pipe full of caustic chemical sitting against a clog — which is dangerous for whoever opens that line next, and hard on older metal pipes.
One more thing worth knowing: if more than one fixture backs up at the same time, that isn't a local clog. When a toilet gurgles as the washer drains or a shower fills when you flush, the problem is in the main line, and cabling one sink won't fix it.
Got a slow or backed-up drain? Call (305) 661-7838 for a free estimate.