Blocked drains, cleared properly

Blocked drains are the most common emergency job Brad gets called to, by a long way. They never happen at a convenient time, and they do not fix themselves.

What it usually is

From your side of the wall it looks like one of these:

• The kitchen sink drains slowly, or not at all, and there is a smell you cannot place.
• The shower fills up around your ankles.
• The toilet gurgles when you flush, or water comes up in the shower when you flush the toilet. That one means the blockage is downstream of both, in the sewer line.
• Water or sewage is coming up out of the overflow gully outside. That is the round grate near an outside wall, usually by the laundry or bathroom. It is doing its job, keeping the mess outside the house instead of inside it.

Behind the wall it is usually one of a handful of things. Tree roots are the big one in the Illawarra. Older earthenware sewer pipes have a joint every metre or so, and roots find the joints, get in, and grow until nothing gets past. The rest is fat and grease down the kitchen sink, wet wipes (they do not break down, whatever the packet says), hair, and the occasional toy.

What Brad does

First, he finds where it is. A drain that backs up at the sink is a different job to a sewer main full of roots, and there is no point clearing the wrong pipe.

Then he clears it. For most blockages that means a high-pressure water jetter, which cuts roots and flushes grease and debris out to the sewer. For a stubborn line he has the electric eel as well. Either way the drain is cleared, not just poked at until it runs a bit.

Then he checks it. A CCTV drain camera goes down the line so he can see what caused the block and whether the pipe is damaged. If it was roots, the camera shows where they are getting in. If the pipe is cracked or collapsed, you will see that too, and Brad will tell you your options straight: keep clearing it every year or so, reline it, or replace the section. See pipe relining and sewer renewals for what that involves.

Things worth knowing

Chemical drain cleaners from the supermarket are not much use on roots and are not kind to old pipes. If you have already poured one down, tell Brad when he arrives so he knows what is in the line.

If sewage is coming up inside the house, stop using water. Every flush and every load of washing is going to end up on the floor.

After hours

Blocked drains do not keep office hours and neither does Brad. After-hours call-outs are available across the Illawarra. There is an extra charge for after-hours work and it depends on the job, so Brad will tell you the call-out cost on the phone before he leaves, not after he arrives.