Our Process
How a Gardena job runs, step by step: the call, the written quote, the work and the test — and the cheaper option named when there is one.
Four steps, start to finish
Your cleanout found and shown to you, and the real LA County figure rather than a $49 advert.
Call, and tell us what is affected
Which fixtures, and whether anything backs up at the lowest point in the house — which here is usually a shower or a tub, not a floor drain.
We find the cleanout
On slab construction the outside cleanout is the way in, and a surprising number of people have never been shown where theirs is.
The cheap answers first
If it is one slow fixture, we will tell you what to try before we come out — a plunger with the overflow blocked, or a hand snake past the trap.
Clear it, then say what caused it
A blockage cleared without a cause explained is one you will pay for again.
The prices, in one place
Estimated ranges for Los Angeles County homes. Your own written quote comes after we have seen it.
01Drain Cleaning - $110 - $345
About $227 on average across la county.
See the job
02Main Sewer Line Cleaning - $200 - $450 snaked
Jetting $350-800.
See the job
03Emergency Drain Cleaning - $150 - $500
Most of these can wait, honestly.
See the job
04Kitchen Drain Cleaning - $150 - $300
Grease is nearly always the cause.
See the job
05Bathroom Drain Cleaning - $75 - $175
Hand snake past the trap.
See the job
06Hydro Jetting - $350 - $800 on a main
Branch $250-500.
See the jobThe drain advice you just read was written for a basement
And almost no house in Gardena has one, which changes every instruction in it.
There is no basement floor drain here
Southern California builds slab-on-grade or crawl space.
So the lowest fixture is a shower or a…
That is the position a basement floor drain occupies in the houses the advice describes — which means it is your shower, not a floor drain, that reports main-line trouble first.
And the way in is outside
The access point that matters is a cleanout at the wall or out by the curb.
Which is why pouring something caustic…
In a basement house a corroded joint shows up as a wet floor you can see and can reach.
The first real rain finds every joint that has moved
Worth knowing, because the busiest week of the year is entirely predictable.
Roots grow through the warm months into any joint that has opened, and a lateral can run at half capacity for a long time without anybody noticing. Then the first sustained rain arrives, groundwater raises the load on the line, and a drain that had merely been slow stops altogether — across whole streets in the same week, particularly where the trees were all planted at once.
Which makes the cheap version of this a scheduled problem rather than an emergency. If a drain was slow last winter and slow again this spring, it is telling you what will happen in November. Dealing with it in standard hours in September costs a fraction of dealing with it at nine on a wet Sunday, and it is the same work.
- Told on the phone whether this genuinely needs today
- Free methods explained before a visit is booked
- Your cleanout located in daylight, not at eleven at night
- A camera offered where a drain has blocked more than once
Want a figure on it?
The rate before we travel, and a fixed figure in writing before any work starts.