While washing the dishes after supper on Thursday, June 10/21, my wife noticed the water in the sink staying in our 2-basin sink. That evening, she put baking soda and vinegar and poured hot water in the sink but the water still stayed in the sink.
The following morning, Friday, June 11, my wife and I (both seniors) used a plunger to no avail either, as only dirt coming out of the sink. I removed the trap valve under the sink but the clog was not in plastic pipes under the sink.
At 3:38pm, I phoned Gus Kaspiris of City Plumbing at his cell phone. He recognized me and remembers where we live as he had done two excellent emergency plumbing services for us in the past. When explained of the problem, because he was finishing up a major plumbing job with a client today, he said he’d come by tomorrow morning, Friday, June 11, on his way to his pre-booked client, to look at our plumbing problem.
True to his promise, around 9:05am of June 11, he came over to take a look of our plumbing problem.
Gus took a look of the plastic pipes under the sink he installed replacing the old copper pipes when we had a broken kitchen sink in February 2016, leading to writing my first review for and published by HomeStars then.
After taking his portable mechanized plumbing snake (the snake) from his van, he asked me to show him where the kitchen sink pipe leads to under the kitchen in the basement. He was hoping he could find a pipe connection down the kitchen floor he could use the snake get into and not from the kitchen sink, where being an old house (more than 65 years old), he would have space working problem. He found out all the plumbing pipes upstairs were sealed in the basement.
Leaving no option, even with space problem to work on, Gus removed the plastic pipe connectors under the sink and uses the snake to get down to the kitchen sink pipe under the basement.
He used the maximum length of the snake to clear the clog, three times. Every time he would pull the snake up, it was covered with greasy substance, hair and other dirt which R&L tried to avoid getting into the sink. Some grease, however, cannot be avoided get into the sink because we use vegetable oil preparing our dishes through the years.
After using the snake three times and cleaning the grease and other dirt on it, he ran the water in the sink (after asking us to flash the toilet) to test whether the clog had already been cleared.
Note: During the short period Gus was working on our clogged kitchen sink, he received two phone calls on his cell phone from clients also requesting for his service.
Gus professional plumbing skills and his portable mechanized plumbing snake cleared our clogged kitchen sink in 40 minutes which caused us stress, not being able to use it overnight and thinking what if the clog won’t be cleared by Gus’ emergency visit today.
While we can continue using baking soda, vinegar and hot water to prevent future clogging of our kitchen sink, Gus told us not to use Drano plumbing liquid as the latter would damage the kitchen sink copper pipe down below.
When asked how much we owe him for this morning’s job, he told us normally he would charge the basic emergency service call fee of $200. However, being an old and good client, he would just charge us $150, giving us a giving us a senior’s discount of $50.
The $50 service fee discount given to us was secondary for Gus’ plumbing skills, friendliness, honesty and being considerate for senior’s plumbing needs, which I strongly vouch and endorse for the third time.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $200.00