Two in the morning, Thanksgiving, the middle of a storm. A real person answers and a truck comes out. Not an answering service that takes a message for Monday. If it is happening now, call now.
People apologise for calling us at night far more often than they should. If you are unsure, the honest answer is that it is better to ask at eleven at night than to find out at six in the morning. But these are the ones that genuinely should not wait:
The single most useful thing you can do. If the main line is blocked, every flush, shower, and load of laundry has nowhere to go except back into the house. Tell everyone in the building, because one person who does not know can undo it.
Especially where there is any chance of live electricity, and especially if it came up through a drain. Belongings can be replaced.
From a safe spot, before anything is moved or cleaned. If insurance ends up involved, the pictures taken at the worst moment are the ones that matter.
They will not clear a blocked main line, and they leave a caustic liquid sitting in the pipe for whoever opens it. If you already used some, just tell us so we can work safely.
Which fixtures are affected, whether it is one or several, whether anything is actively coming up, and whether this has happened before. Thirty seconds of that lets us load the right equipment before we leave, which often saves an hour at your house.
There is a pattern to it. Holidays are the big one. A house full of people puts a week of normal use through the drains in a single day, and a line that was quietly half blocked finally gives up. Kitchen lines fail on Thanksgiving for exactly this reason.
Heavy rain is the other. Ground water rises, the city system takes on far more than usual, and lines that cope in dry weather back up. That is why storms produce clusters of calls across the same low lying neighbourhoods within a few hours of each other.
Neither is bad luck. Both are a line that was already struggling meeting the day it could not cope, which is why a drain that has been slow for months is worth dealing with before a holiday rather than during one.
Emergency work at three in the morning is not priced the same as a booked visit on a Tuesday afternoon, and any company telling you otherwise is building it in somewhere else. What we will not do is use the situation against you.
You get the number before we start, the same as always. It does not change once we are inside and you have seen how bad it is. If we find something mid job that alters the picture, we stop and talk to you rather than presenting it afterward. Nobody should be negotiating while there is waste on their floor.
We work out of New Dorp, which is a short run to most of the island: Great Kills, Eltingville, Annadale, Tottenville, Oakwood, Dongan Hills, South Beach, Midland Beach, St. George, Stapleton, West Brighton, Port Richmond, New Springville and everywhere between. Being local is most of what makes a two in the morning call answerable at all.
Yes. A person, not a machine. Several of our reviews are from people who called late at night and got a call straight back.
Usually within a couple of hours, often sooner. During a major storm every company on the island is fielding calls at once, so call early rather than waiting to see if it settles.
If waste is actively coming up, no. Overnight damage and the cleanup that follows cost far more than the difference. If everything is stable and nothing is spreading, waiting is a reasonable choice and we will tell you so on the phone.
Yes, including the ones that generate the most calls. Thanksgiving and Christmas are two of our busiest days of the year.
That is often the best time to do it. Restaurants and buildings would rather we worked overnight than lost a service, and we are set up for that.
Drain backing up right now?