Drain Cleaning in Middlesex County, MA

Clearing It Is the Easy Part

Kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, toilets, floor drains and basement drains. Drain cleaning is one of eleven plumbing services Opus runs out of North Billerica, across Middlesex County and the Merrimack Valley. If the same drain has backed up twice in a year, the interesting question isn’t how to clear it again, it’s what’s actually down there. One flat price in writing before we start, booties on at the door.

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Customer Info

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Only used to confirm your request.

Customer Info

Your email

Only used to confirm your request.

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Which Drain Is It?

Kitchen, Bathroom, Shower and Tub Drains

Where the water stops tells us most of what we need before we arrive. Different fixtures clog in different ways, and they don’t get cleared with the same tool.

Kitchen sink.

Grease, nearly always. It goes down warm and liquid, cools in the horizontal run, and builds a lining that narrows over months. A disposal makes it worse rather than better, because it adds solids to something that’s already coating the pipe.

Bathroom sink.

Hair and soap bound together, usually within a foot of the drain. Often the easiest clog in the house and the one most likely to be genuinely fixable yourself.

Shower or tub.

Same hair and soap, further down, and the trap is harder to reach. A tub that drains slowly and a tub that gurgles are two different problems. Gurgling usually means air, not blockage.

Toilets, Floor Drains and Basement Drains

Toilet.

If a plunger hasn’t shifted it, stop. A closet auger reaches past the trap without scratching the bowl, and the wrong tool here scars porcelain permanently. Persistent toilet problems that aren’t clogs sit on fixture repairs.

Floor or basement drain.

These matter more than people think, because they’re the lowest opening in the house. When something further along the line backs up, this is where it shows first. Water appearing at a floor drain is a warning about the system, not about the drain.

If water is backing up faster than it’s going away, shut off what’s feeding it and call. That’s 24/7 emergency plumbing.

SUBMIT A FORM & REACH OUT

A Clog That Comes Back Was Never Cleared

Why Your Drain Keeps Clogging

This is the difference between clearing a drain and fixing one, and it’s most of what separates a real drain cleaning company from someone with a cable.

Punching a hole through a blockage restores flow immediately.

The water runs, everyone’s satisfied, and the lining that caused the problem is still on the pipe wall. It closes up again over the following weeks and you’re back where you started, usually within a few months.

Clearing it properly means cutting back to the pipe wall.

With a cable and head sized to that pipe, and pulling the material out rather than pushing it along to become somebody’s problem downstream.

And sometimes the clog isn't the cause.

A drain that keeps blocking in the same place may have a belly in the line where water sits, a partial break, roots at a joint, or a section of old cast iron that’s scaled down to half its diameter. No amount of cabling fixes any of those. That’s when we stop guessing and look.

We'd Rather See It Than Guess

Drain Camera Inspection and Cleanouts

A camera down the line turns an argument into a picture. It’s not needed on a hair clog in a bathroom sink, and we won’t sell you one for that.

It earns its place on a repeat offender.

Third clog in the same run, water coming up somewhere it shouldn’t, or a house old enough that nobody knows what the drains are made of. The camera tells us whether we’re looking at build-up, a structural problem, or roots, and those three have completely different answers.

Cleanouts are what make any of this straightforward.

A cleanout is an accessible capped fitting that lets us get a cable into the line properly rather than working through a fixture. Plenty of older houses around here either don’t have one where it’s needed or have had one buried behind finished work. If yours is inaccessible we’ll say what it takes to reach it before starting, not with your kitchen out of action.

Where Our Work Stops

Interior Drains, Not Sewer Laterals

We work on the drains inside your building, through to the accessible cleanout. Fixtures, branch lines, stacks, floor drains and the interior run.

Once the pipe passes the foundation and heads for the street, that’s a different licence. A municipal drain layer’s licence, issued town by town, and not one we hold. So no sewer laterals, no water service lines and no trenching in the yard, in any of the fourteen towns we cover. If the camera shows the problem is out there, you’ll get told exactly that, along with what kind of contractor you need.

We also don’t hydro jet. We cable and we camera. For most interior drains that’s the right tool anyway, and where it genuinely isn’t, we’d rather say so than sell you the service we happen to own.

What Drain Cleaning Costs

We don’t publish figures, because a number without your house attached to it is a guess and every competitor quoting one online is quoting a best case.

What actually moves the price is which fixture, how far in the blockage sits, whether there’s an accessible cleanout, whether the line needs a camera to diagnose, and whether it’s a Tuesday morning or two in the morning. Those are knowable before we start, which is why you get one flat written number rather than an hourly clock.

What doesn’t move it is how long the job ends up taking. If a clog we quoted as straightforward turns into three hours, that’s our problem, not a revised invoice. And if we open it up and find something nobody could have known was there, we stop and requote before going further rather than carrying on and telling you afterwards. There’s $50 off for new customers on a first job.

Store-Bought Drain Cleaner Buys You a Week

What to Try Before You Call

Some of this you can genuinely sort yourself, and we’d rather you did than pay us for ten minutes.

Pull the stopper and clear what's on it.

On a bathroom sink or a tub, most of the blockage is within reach of your fingers or a cheap plastic hair tool. This solves a surprising share of slow drains.

Plunge it properly.

Seal the overflow with a wet cloth first, or you’re just moving air. On a double sink, block the other side. Most people give up before the plunger has actually done anything.

Pour the chemical cleaner away instead.

It rarely clears a real blockage, it sits in the trap corroding older pipe, and it turns the job hazardous for whoever opens that trap next. If you’ve already used some, tell us before we start, because it changes how we approach it.

Run water into an unused drain.

A stinky shower or floor drain in a spare bathroom is usually a dried-out trap letting sewer gas past, not a clog at all. A jug of water down it fixes that for nothing.

If none of that shifts it, or the same drain is back within weeks, that’s the point where calling is the cheaper option. The older the house, the sooner that point arrives, and most of the housing across our service areas has decades on it.

The Clean House Promise

How We Leave a Home After Drain Work

Drain work is the messiest thing a plumber does in your house, and it happens under the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, and at the bottom of the cellar stairs. Booties go on at the door, every visit, including the ten-minute ones. Drop cloths go down before anything comes apart, and on drain work that means the cabinet floor and the route as well as the area underneath. What comes out of the line leaves with us. Before we pack up, the floor where we stood gets wiped. When we pull out, you should be able to tell what we fixed and nothing else.

Our Customer Feedback

Rick Green did an awesome job with all of my plumbing needs during a total renovation. I needed everything in my home connected/redone in the kitchen and bathroom. He took care of the transition from bathtub to standing shower-it’s all …

Janet Vasquez

July 2026

Ricky and the team at OPUS are fantastic! Super knowledgeable, punctual and all around great group of guys. Really grateful to have found them, I sleep easier now knowing I have a great plumbing team (you genuinely never know when you may …

Christopher

August 2026

I highly recommend (Rick) he was on time fixed everything, was polite and answered all our questions and cleaned up everything when he was done! Thank you so much!

Robert Welch

March 2026

Great service! Very responsive. Always on time and gets the job done quickly. Already have them booked for my next project.

carolina

April 2026

“Been using Opus for years on a variety of projects. Reliable, transparent and priced well. Rick does great quality work. Highly recommend for homeowners, investors and builders.”

Signature Page

May 2026

“Had a leak in my water heater tank. Ricky and team arrived very quickly, same day to assess the situation. I asked if we could avoid swapping out the water heater and just buy the parts needed to fix (I was being cheap!) – he did he absolute best (a few hours) trying to extract the old part and replace it with a new one. He tried far longer than any other plumber would have tried. After several hours of attempts we all came to the conclusion that it simply wasn’t coming out. I ran to Home Depot (it was Saturday) and grabbed a water heater. Ricky and team had it installed within 15 minutes and my new unit is working perfectly.

Very impressed with Ricky’s transparency and honesty. Most others wouldnt have given me the time of day…”

Dan Doherty

April 2026

I contacted Opus upon being referred to them by someone they also did great work for. They showed up on time and finished a heating system job for me with the utmost professionalism and quality. I would definitely recommend them to others!!

Brian Sullivan

October 2025

Ricky was Fantastic!!!! Fast and accurate service!!! Highly recommend!!!

Sandra Best

March 2026

Questions Billerica Homeowners Ask Us

“Clear answers. One written price. You decide before we start.”

Ricky Greene

Owner & Master Plumber

Why does my drain keep clogging?

Because the first clearance punched a hole through the blockage rather than taking it back to the pipe wall, or because something structural is causing it. A belly in the line, a partial break, roots at a joint or scaled-down cast iron will all re-clog no matter how often they’re cabled. A camera settles which one you have.

Do you clear sewer lines out to the street?

No. We work on the drains inside the building through to the accessible cleanout. Beyond the foundation you need a municipal drain layer, licensed by your town, which is not a licence we hold. If a camera shows the problem is out there we’ll tell you plainly and say what kind of contractor to call.

Is chemical drain cleaner bad for my pipes?

It’s rarely effective on a real blockage and it sits in the trap corroding older pipe while it waits. It also makes the job hazardous for whoever opens that trap. If you’ve already poured some in, say so when you book. It changes how we handle it.

Why does my shower drain smell?

Usually a dried-out P-trap rather than a clog, especially in a bathroom that doesn’t get used often. The trap holds water that blocks sewer gas, and it evaporates. Pour a jug of water down it. If the smell persists after that, it’s biofilm in the line and worth a proper clean.

Do I need a camera inspection?

Not for a hair clog in a bathroom sink, and we won’t sell you one for that. It’s worth it on a drain that’s blocked repeatedly, on a house old enough that nobody knows what the pipes are, or when water is appearing somewhere it shouldn’t.

“Clear answers. One written price. You decide before we start.”

Ricky Greene

Owner & Master Plumber

The Towns We Cover Across Middlesex County

Opus runs out of North Billerica and covers roughly a 20-mile radius, from the older neighborhoods of Woburn and Winchester to the affluent, boiler-heavy homes in Concord, Carlisle, and Lincoln. If your home is within about 20 miles, we most likely cover you.

Tips for Keeping Your Water Hot and Your Basement Dry

It’s about to get cold

October 22, 2026

Which pipes freeze first, what to do in October so they don’t, and what to do at two in the morning if one already has. Frozen and burst pipes covers all of it.

You think something’s leaking

October 22, 2026

Stains, a meter still ticking with every tap shut off, a warm patch of floor. Leak detection finds where the water is actually coming from before anybody opens a wall.

Your boiler needs looking at

October 22, 2026

How often hot water and steam systems want servicing, what the annual visit includes, and which noises are worth calling about. Boiler service and repair answers all three.

It’s about to get cold

October 22, 2026

Which pipes freeze first, what to do in October so they don’t, and what to do at two in the morning if one already has. Frozen and burst pipes covers all of it.

You think something’s leaking

October 22, 2026

Stains, a meter still ticking with every tap shut off, a warm patch of floor. Leak detection finds where the water is actually coming from before anybody opens a wall.

Your boiler needs looking at

October 22, 2026

How often hot water and steam systems want servicing, what the annual visit includes, and which noises are worth calling about. Boiler service and repair answers all three.

Your water heater is making you nervous

October 22, 2026

Age, rusty water, a puddle, or hot water that runs out sooner than it used to. Four signs that point the same way, and water heater installation is what comes next.

Tankless Error Codes

October 15, 2026

Learn what common error codes mean and when descaling can help.

Tank vs. Tankless

October 15, 2026

Compare water heaters to find the right fit for your home and budget.