Drain & Sewer Services in Austin & San Antonio

Drain lines are the smaller pipes inside the house. Each sink, tub, shower, toilet and washing machine has its own, and they all feed into a larger building drain under the floor. The sewer line, sometimes called the lateral, is the single pipe that carries everything from the building drain out through the yard to the city main in the street or to a septic tank. The distinction matters for diagnosis. If one fixture is slow, the problem is in its drain line. If several fixtures back up at once, especially the lowest ones in the house, the problem is almost always in the sewer line, and clearing one sink will not fix it.

Look at what else is affected. A single slow bathroom sink is a local clog. When the toilet gurgles as the tub drains, when water comes up in the shower after a load of laundry, or when the lowest fixture in the house backs up while the upstairs ones are fine, the blockage is downstream of all of them, in the building drain or the sewer line. Water standing around the cleanout cap in the yard is another sure sign. In that case, stop running water, because everything you send down is going to come up somewhere, and call. We clear the main line through the cleanout and, if the clog keeps coming back, run a camera to find out why.

We would rather you did not. Lye and acid drain products generate heat and rarely reach a real clog, and in the older cast iron common under Austin and San Antonio slabs they eat at pipe that is already thin. They also sit in the standing water of a fully blocked drain, which means the next person to open that line, whether that is you or our plumber, is working in a caustic bath. A plunger is fine. A hand auger on a bathroom sink is fine. If those do not clear it, the clog is farther down than a store-bought product will reach, and cabling or hydro jetting is the honest fix.

No. Radiant is available 24/7 with upfront pricing and no surprise fees, even on weekends and holidays. Sewer backups do not keep business hours, and a family with one bathroom cannot wait until Monday. You get a written price before the work starts and that is what you pay. Care Club members also get 24/7 emergency service at standard rates with no after-hours trip fees, priority scheduling and no dispatch fees at any time.

It covers the two jobs where a backup would mean we did not finish the work: drain clearing and sewer line replacement. If your drainage backs up or slows after either one, we come out and check it at no charge, and if the problem is related to our work, we make it right. What it does not cover is a new problem in a different part of the system, or a line that we told you needs replacing and you chose to have cleared instead. We will be clear about that at the time. The full terms are on our Home Comfort Guarantee page.