Blocked drains are one of the most common jobs I get called to in Canberra. Most of them did not have to happen. A few small habits at the sink and the toilet will save you a call-out fee and a very unpleasant afternoon. Here are the five that make the biggest difference.
1. Do Not Pour Grease Down the Sink
This is the number one cause of blocked kitchen drains. Cooking oil, fat and grease go down as a liquid while they are hot. Then they cool in the pipe, set hard and stick to the pipe wall. Layer on layer, the pipe narrows until nothing gets through.
Running hot water or a squirt of dishwashing liquid after it does not help. The grease just travels a bit further down the line and sets there instead, somewhere much harder to reach.
Do this instead. Let the oil and fat cool, then scrape it into the bin. If it is only a small amount, wipe the pan out with a paper towel before it goes anywhere near the sink. Keep an old jar or tin by the stove for used cooking oil and bin it when it fills up.
2. Use Drain Guards and Strainers
A mesh drain guard over the shower, bath and kitchen sink catches hair and food scraps before they get into the pipe. They cost a few dollars at any hardware store and you drop them in place in about two seconds.
Hair causes most bathroom drain blockages. In a house with long hair in it, one shower sends down enough to start the process. A guard catches it while it is still easy to deal with. Empty it after each use and that is the job done.
In the kitchen, a sink strainer stops food scraps going the same way. Even small bits add up, and they tend to settle in the U-bend under the sink where the water slows down.
3. Be Careful What You Flush
A toilet handles human waste and toilet paper. That is the whole list. Everything else goes in the bin. Here is what I most often pull out of blocked sewer lines:
- Wet wipes (even the ones labelled "flushable" cause blockages)
- Cotton buds and cotton pads
- Sanitary products
- Nappies
- Paper towels and tissues
- Dental floss
"Flushable" wipes deserve their own mention. Whatever the packaging claims, they do not break down the way toilet paper does. They snag on pipe joints and rough spots, then knit together into a mat that catches everything behind it. I have cut solid lumps of them out of blocked sewer lines that would not shift without a high-pressure jetter.
4. Schedule Regular Maintenance
An annual drain clean is cheap next to a major blockage. A plumber runs a high-pressure jetter through the line and washes out a year's worth of grease, soap residue, hair and mineral scale before any of it turns into a plug.
It matters more in older Canberra homes. Places built in the 1960s and 70s often still have clay or earthenware drainage, and those pipes crack at the joints and let tree roots in. A jet and a camera run picks that up while it is still a small job rather than a collapsed pipe and an excavator in the front yard.
If you have already had one blockage, put the maintenance in the diary. Clearing a blockage does not remove whatever caused it. Cut roots grow back. Grease comes back. Getting the line washed out on a schedule keeps it moving and gives you warning before it becomes a Sunday night emergency.
5. Watch for Early Warning Signs
A drain almost never goes from fine to fully blocked overnight. It tells you first. Watch for:
- Slow draining. If the sink, shower or bath is emptying slower than it used to, something is already narrowing the pipe. Dealing with it now costs a fraction of what it costs once the line stops completely.
- Gurgling. A drain that gurgles, especially when you run a tap or flush somewhere else in the house, is air pushing past a partial blockage.
- Smells. A bad odour out of a drain usually means organic matter or grease sitting in the line, and sometimes a partial sewer blockage. It is worth looking at.
- Water coming up somewhere else. If the shower fills when you flush the toilet, the blockage is in the main sewer line, not the fixture. That one needs a plumber.
When to Call a Professional
For a slow drain, try a plunger first. An old cup plunger clears plenty of minor blockages in sinks and showers. Skip the chemical drain cleaner. It is hard on the pipe, bad for the environment, and it rarely touches whatever is actually causing the problem.
If the plunger does nothing, or the same drain keeps blocking, call a plumber. We put a CCTV camera down the line and look at it. Grease, tree roots, a cracked or collapsed section, a foreign object: they all look different on the screen and they all get fixed differently. Knowing which one you have is the difference between a repair and a temporary clear.
Stubborn buildup comes out with a high-pressure water jetter. Where tree roots are the cause, we cut them out and then talk to you about what stops them coming back, because they will otherwise. More detail on our blocked drain services.
Dealing with a blocked drain?
Call Jack. We clear drains right across Canberra, day or night.