Handyman Gets Snake Stuck | Damage Control

What should have been a basic kitchen sink clog turned into one of those jobs that reminds you why drain cleaning can get ugly fast. I started with the plunger — no luck. There was an awkward cleanout added underneath the kitchen sink, so I went in with one of my smaller drain snakes first. Almost immediately I knew this line had bigger problems than a normal grease or food blockage. I started pulling ROOTS out of a kitchen sink drain line. That usually means something further down the system is compromised, collapsed, or tied into a bad section underground. I checked the downstairs bathroom, flushed toilets, ran fixtures, and strangely nothing else was backing up. So now I’m dealing with a kitchen line on a slab home, roots in the pipe, and a drain cable that keeps hanging up. I switched over to my larger Milwaukee M18 drum snake, tried different heads, fought with cable size limitations, then went back to the smaller machine hoping I could at least punch through enough to get flow. Bad idea. The cable buried itself and got completely stuck. At that point the job turned into damage control — reverse, forward, reverse, forward, trying not to snap another cable or create an even bigger mess inside the line. After a lot of fighting, I finally got enough leverage with channel locks to yank the cable back out... but the clog won this round. Sometimes even with multiple machines, multiple cable sizes, and years in the field, the setup is just wrong for the equipment you have on the truck. #kitchensinkclog #drainsnake #draincleaning #plumbingproblems #handyman #cloggeddrain #rootsinpipe