Drain Cleaning & Clogged Sewer Service on Long Island - Same Day, Any Time, No Extra Charge
A clogged drain doesn’t wait for business hours. A sewer line backing up into your basement at 9 p.m. on a Saturday isn’t a scheduled appointment, it’s a crisis. That’s exactly when Citywide answers the phone. We’ve been snaking drains and clearing clogged sewer lines on Long Island since 1952. We’re not a franchise and we’re not a call center. We’re a local Long Island company with more than 120 employees and 65+ trucks dispatched from right here. When you call, a local dispatcher picks up and a licensed Long Island technician is on the way, same day, with no premium for nights, weekends, or holidays.
📞 Call 24/7: 1.888.458.3380 | Schedule Online
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.8 stars · 1,833+ Google reviews
✅ Licensed & insured · Serving Long Island & NYC since 1952
🕐 Same-day service · Nights, weekends & holidays at no extra charge
🔒 All work 100% guaranteed
What “Snake Drain Cleaning” Actually Means
A drain snake (sometimes called an auger or sewer cable) is a flexible metal cable that’s fed into a drain or sewer line to break up a clog and pull it out. Sounds simple, and for a slow bathroom sink it kind of is. Where it gets complicated is on real clogs: a kitchen line packed with hardened grease, a washing machine drain matted with lint, a 100-foot sewer lateral wrapped in tree roots. Those clogs need professional-grade equipment, and just as importantly, they need a technician who knows which snake to use.
That’s why a generic “snake and go” call isn’t always enough on Long Island, especially in older homes. We diagnose the line first, choose the right tool, clear the clog, and test the line afterward to confirm full flow, not just a trickle.
Why Long Island Drains Clog More Than You’d Expect
Long Island’s housing stock is older than most of the country. The majority of homes in Nassau County and western Suffolk were built between the 1940s and 1970s, which means the original cast-iron drain lines and clay sewer pipes from that era are still in the ground at most of those homes today.
Cast iron corrodes from the inside. Over decades, the pipe wall develops a rough, scaled surface that catches grease and debris far faster than modern PVC. Clay sewer pipes crack at the joints as the ground shifts, and once there’s a crack, tree roots find it within a few years. We’ve pulled root masses thick as a fist out of sewer lines all across the Island, in pretty much every older neighborhood.
South Shore homes have the added pressure of high water tables and storm flooding. North Shore neighborhoods sit on hillier terrain with mature trees, which makes root intrusion in the main sewer line one of the most common service calls we get in those areas.
The takeaway: a Long Island drain isn’t quite like a drain anywhere else, and the snaking approach has to match the pipe.
Sound familiar? If you’ve got a slow drain, a gurgling toilet, or water backing up anywhere in the house, don’t wait for it to turn into a 2 a.m. emergency.
📞 Call 1.888.458.3380 for same-day service, or schedule online.
Snake Drain Services We Provide
Kitchen Drain Snaking & Grease Line Clearing
Kitchen drains are the most common service call we get on Long Island. The cause is almost always the same: years of grease, cooking oil, food scraps, and soap scum building up on the inside of the pipe until water barely trickles down. A garbage disposal masks the early signs, then makes it worse by emulsifying grease and pushing it further into the line. On older cast-iron drains, this buildup adheres like concrete.
We snake the kitchen line with a motorized drum machine to break up the blockage, then flush the pipe to remove residue. For lines with heavy buildup (common in homes over 40 years old), we recommend hydro-jetting, which uses high-pressure water to scour the pipe wall back to bare metal.
Signs your kitchen drain needs a professional snake:
- Water draining slower than it did six months ago
- Gurgling sound when the dishwasher drains
- Standing water in the sink after normal use
- Odor from the drain that doesn’t clear with cleaning
Bathroom Snake Drain: Sinks, Tubs, and Showers
Bathroom clogs are almost always a mat of hair, soap, toothpaste, and skin cells that binds together just below the stopper. It builds slowly until water barely moves. A standing tub or shower means the clog has moved past the stopper into the branch drain line, which needs a snake, not a bottle of drain cleaner.
We service every bathroom fixture type, including pedestal sinks, vanity sinks, clawfoot tubs, walk-in showers, and frameless glass enclosures. Our technicians remove drain covers and stoppers cleanly, snake the line down to the branch, and reassemble everything so you’d never know we were there.
Toilet Auger Service & Clogged Toilet Repair
A toilet that won’t flush past the rim has a clog in the trap or the line just behind it. A plunger handles soft blockages. Wipes (yes, even the “flushable” ones, which are not actually flushable), feminine products, and paper towels need to be physically removed with a closet auger. If multiple toilets in the house are failing at the same time, the problem isn’t the toilet, it’s the main sewer line.
Washing Machine & Laundry Drain Snaking
The standpipe and drain line behind a washing machine take constant abuse. Hot water, detergent, lint, and fabric softener residue accumulate inside the pipe and narrow the line until it backs up. The first sign is usually water spilling out of the standpipe and onto the laundry room floor during the drain cycle. Store-bought drain cleaners almost always fail on lint clogs and can damage older pipes.
We snake the laundry drain from the standpipe down to where it ties into the main waste line, and we check the trap for the lint mat that’s almost always at the root of the problem.
Basement Floor Drains & Utility Sinks
Your basement floor drain catches water from your water heater, washing machine overflow, and the basement itself during heavy rain. When it backs up, you can end up with standing water on a finished floor. Utility sinks have similar issues to kitchen sinks, just with more dirt, paint, and laundry residue. These are calls to make before the problem, not during it.
Main Sewer Line Snaking & Clogged Sewer Repair
When multiple drains in your home are slow or backing up at the same time, with toilets gurgling when the washer runs or water rising in the tub when you flush, the blockage isn’t in a single fixture. It’s in your main sewer line, and every drain in the house empties into it.
The most common causes of a clogged sewer line on Long Island:
- Tree root intrusion. Long Island’s mature trees, especially in older Nassau County neighborhoods, send roots into the joints of clay sewer pipes. A single root mass can block a 4-inch sewer line completely within a season.
- Pipe belly or sag. Decades of ground movement cause sections of pipe to settle. Water and waste pool in the low point instead of flowing through.
- Cracked or collapsed pipe. Original clay and Orangeburg sewers (a paper-and-tar material used widely in the 1950s and 60s) have a finite lifespan. Once a section collapses, snaking only buys time, and the line needs to be repaired.
- Grease and debris buildup. Decades of kitchen waste hardening inside the line.
- Flushed items that don’t break down. Wipes, paper towels, and feminine products. Wipes are the single biggest cause of preventable sewer backups in the last ten years.
We clear main sewer line clogs with heavy-duty sectional sewer machines sized for Long Island’s older pipe diameters. For diagnosis, we run a sewer camera through the line so you can see exactly what’s happening underground, with no guessing and no unnecessary digging. If the line is structurally damaged, we offer trenchless sewer line repair that fixes the pipe from inside, with no excavation of your yard or driveway.
Our Snake Drain Equipment: The Right Tool for Every Pipe
Citywide trucks carry a complete range of professional drain equipment. Not one tool for every job, but the right tool for the specific problem:
- Hand augers and closet augers for individual fixtures and toilets.
- Mid-size drum machines with interchangeable cable sizes for tubs, showers, and kitchen branch drains.
- Sectional sewer machines with cutting heads sized to your pipe diameter, for clearing main lines and roots.
- Trailer-mounted hydro-jetters rated up to 4,000 PSI for severe grease buildup, full pipe restoration, and commercial lines.
- Sewer cameras to diagnose the line before service and confirm a clean line after.
When you call a company that only carries one or two tools, you get whatever they have, not whatever your pipe needs. Using the wrong tool on an older Long Island cast-iron or clay line can push a clog further, damage the pipe, or leave the line only partially cleared so you’re calling again in three weeks. We test every line after clearing to confirm full flow, not just an opening.
Need a sewer camera inspection or jetting estimate? Free over the phone in most cases.
📞 Call 1.888.458.3380 or request a quote online.
Commercial Snake Drain Services for Long Island Businesses
For restaurants, property managers, medical buildings, schools, hotels, and retail tenants, a clogged drain isn’t an inconvenience, it’s a closed dining room or an evacuated office. Commercial drain snaking on Long Island brings its own challenges, and we handle them every day. We’re already the service partner for major commercial accounts across the region, including ALDI and BJ’s Wholesale Club.
Restaurants and food service. Commercial kitchens generate massive amounts of grease, and even well-maintained grease traps eventually let grease through to the drain line. We service grease traps and combine that with scheduled hydro-jetting of the kitchen drain line to keep buildup from ever turning into a backup. See our grease trap pumping service for more.
Multi-family and apartment buildings. Stack clogs in apartment buildings are notorious because a single clog can back up multiple units at different floors. Snaking through the roof vent or accessing the stack at the right cleanout is critical, and so is finishing the call without damaging finished interiors.
Strip malls, office buildings, and shared sewer laterals. When tenants in a strip mall or medical office park share one sewer lateral, diagnosis matters. We camera the line to figure out exactly where the clog is, so the right party handles the repair.
Property management and preventive contracts. Scheduled hydro-jetting once or twice a year prevents the 2 a.m. emergency calls and protects buildings from sewer water damage. We work with school districts, municipalities, and property managers across Nassau and Suffolk on preventive maintenance contracts.
Call 1.888.458.3380 for a free commercial drain or sewer estimate.
When to Try It Yourself and When to Call a Plumber
Some clogs really are worth a shot with a plunger or a basic hand snake. Don’t waste your weekend on the ones that aren’t. Call Citywide when:
- Multiple drains in the house are slow or backing up at the same time
- You hear gurgling from one fixture when another drains
- Sewage is backing up into a tub, shower, or floor drain
- You smell sewer gas inside the home
- A drain has been snaked or chemically treated and the clog returned within weeks
- Water is pooling in the yard above where your sewer line runs
- You’ve tried a store-bought drain cleaner and it didn’t work
One word on chemical drain cleaners: skip them. They rarely clear a real clog, they corrode cast-iron and clay pipes (the most common drain material in Long Island’s older housing stock), and they create a chemical hazard for the technician who opens the line afterward. The few dollars you save up front cost more in the end.
What to Expect When You Call Citywide
- A live dispatcher answers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No voicemail, no callback queue.
- You get an arrival window immediately, same day in most cases.
- The technician diagnoses before quoting. No surprise charges.
- We show you what we find, especially on main line calls where we run a sewer camera.
- We clear the line and test it. Full flow confirmed before we leave.
- We clean up. Drop cloths in, no mess left behind.
Ready to get that drain cleared?
📞 Call 1.888.458.3380 now or schedule online
Same-day · 24/7 · No extra charge nights, weekends, holidays
Service Area
Citywide Sewer-Drain & Plumbing serves all of Long Island, including Nassau County, Western Suffolk County, and Eastern Suffolk County, along with the five New York City boroughs: Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
When you call Citywide, a Long Island dispatcher answers and sends a truck from our local fleet. Not a call center. Not a third-party contractor. Our people, our trucks, our guarantee.
Frequently Asked Questions About Snake Drain Service
How much does drain snaking cost on Long Island?
Pricing depends on the type of drain, where it’s located, and what we find when we open the line. We give you a price before we start any work, with no hidden fees. For Nassau and Suffolk County, we offer free drain cleaning estimates and only charge if you proceed.
Do you charge extra for nights, weekends, or holidays?
No. Same price any hour, any day of the week, including holidays. That’s been our policy for 74 years.
How soon can someone come out?
Same day in most cases. We dispatch 65+ trucks covering all of Long Island and NYC. Call and we’ll give you an arrival window immediately.
Do you guarantee your snake drain work?
Yes. All drain and sewer cleaning work is guaranteed. If the clog returns within the guarantee period, we come back at no additional charge.
What if the pipe is damaged beyond just a clog?
Our technicians are licensed plumbers, not just drain cleaners. If we find cracked pipe, a broken cleanout, or structural damage during a camera inspection, we can repair or replace it on the same visit, including trenchless sewer lining with no excavation required.
Do you serve commercial properties?
Yes. Restaurants, apartment buildings, property management companies, retail, and industrial facilities. We handle grease traps, high-capacity commercial lines, and multi-unit buildings. Call for a free commercial estimate.
Should I just buy a snake from the hardware store?
A small hand snake from a hardware store can clear hair from a bathroom sink. It will not clear a kitchen grease line, a root-bound sewer line, or a backed-up washing machine drain. Those need professional equipment. If you’re not sure which kind of clog you have, save yourself the rental fee and call us.
Ready to Clear That Drain? Call Citywide Today.
Don’t let a slow drain turn into a sewage backup. Call Citywide and a licensed Long Island plumber will be at your door the same day, including evenings, weekends, and holidays, at no extra charge.
📞 Call 1.888.458.3380 | Schedule service online
