What is commercial drain cleaning
It is clearing the lines that carry waste and grease out of a commercial building — kitchen grease lines to the interceptor, floor drains in kitchens and mechanical rooms, mop sinks, and the building's main line out to the city sewer. On older Portland commercial buildings that main is often clay or cast iron, laid decades before the tenant who's now calling us moved in. Residential drain work is a different job with different lines; see drain cleaning if this is a house.
When does a commercial line need it
Three situations, and they call for different responses:
- It's already backing up. Floor drain won't take water, kitchen sink backs into the mop sink, or a whole building's fixtures are slow. That's emergency plumbing — we come now, not on a schedule.
- It's slow but not stopped. Standing water in floor drains, a smell near the grease interceptor, gurgling in floor sinks during the lunch rush. This is the window to clear it before it closes a kitchen.
- It's due. Restaurants, food service and multi-tenant buildings that don't want a surprise closure put grease line cleaning on a schedule — monthly, quarterly, or whatever the buildup and health inspection cycle calls for.
How the visit goes
We ask what's backing up and where, because a floor drain and a grease interceptor and a building main are three different jobs with different equipment. On site: a cable or hydro-jet clears the line, and for grease and buildup we generally jet it rather than just cable it, since cabling can punch a hole through grease without clearing the walls of the pipe. For a line we haven't cleared before, or one that's backed up more than once, we run a sewer camera inspection to see what's actually in there — grease buildup, roots, a bellied or offset section of old clay pipe, a collapsed spot. That tells us whether this is a cleaning problem or a sewer line repair problem, and we say which before we recommend a fix.
For heavier grease buildup or root intrusion in a building main, hydro jetting does what a cable can't — it scours the full diameter of the pipe rather than boring a channel through the middle.
What affects the price
No number here, because it depends on real variables we won't guess at over the phone:
- What's clogged — a floor drain is a different job than a grease interceptor or a full building main
- How it's clogged — grease, roots, a broken or offset pipe, or just years of buildup
- Access — a cleanout right there, or a line that needs to be reached through a fixture or dug up
- Cabling vs. jetting — jetting costs more per visit but often means fewer visits
- Camera work — worth it on a repeat problem or before a lease turnover, not needed on a routine clean
- Schedule — a same-day emergency call and a planned maintenance visit are priced differently
We look or camera the line first and quote what we actually find.
What's specific to Portland commercial buildings and water
Portland's older commercial buildings — Old Town, Sellwood, the inner eastside industrial blocks, downtown basements — mostly run on clay or cast iron lines that predate almost every tenant improvement done since. Street trees along those same blocks send roots into pipe joints, and root intrusion combined with grease is the most common reason a kitchen or floor drain that cleaned fine in July is backing up by November. The wet season, roughly November through March, raises the water table and taxes older combined sewer connections in parts of the city, so a main that's marginal in summer can back up under fall rain. If your building sits low relative to the street sewer, a floor drain backup during a heavy rain is a capacity issue as much as a grease issue, and that changes the fix — sometimes a sump pump or backflow protection matters more than another cleaning. For restaurants specifically, grease interceptor size and cleaning frequency also get checked by the county at inspection, so a maintenance schedule isn't just convenient — it keeps you ahead of that conversation too.
Why Sheltons Construction
We're a licensed Oregon plumbing contractor working commercial and residential lines across the Portland metro, and we do commercial plumbing service and repair as a regular part of the work, not a side offer. We'll tell you when cabling is enough and when it isn't, we camera a line before we recommend digging it up, and we quote what we find on site rather than a number over the phone.
What to do now
If a drain, floor sink or main is backed up now, call — that's an emergency plumbing call, not a scheduling one. If you want a maintenance schedule for grease lines and floor drains before the next backup, or a camera check on a line that's cleaned but never diagnosed, request a quote or see drain cleaning and hydro jetting for how each is done. Questions about scope or timing are on the FAQ.
We serve commercial and residential customers across Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Tigard, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, West Linn, Oregon City, Milwaukie, Happy Valley, Clackamas, Wilsonville, Troutdale, Sherwood, and down to Salem for scheduled or larger jobs.