Blocked drains and drain jetting, across the Blue Mountains

Anyone can push a blockage through and drive away. The question worth asking is why it blocked, because if the answer is tree roots in a cracked clay pipe, it will block again next season and you will pay twice.

We clear it, then put a camera down and show you the cause. Sometimes the answer is a bad week and a lot of wet wipes. Often, up here, it is roots.

What we handle

• Blocked toilets, sinks, showers and floor wastes
• Main sewer chokes and overflowing gullies
• High-pressure water jetting
• CCTV camera inspection with footage you can keep
• Root cutting and ongoing root management
• Pipe location and depth marking before you dig
• Stormwater and downpipe blockages
• Pipe relining and excavation where a repair is the only real fix

Why it's different up here

Upper Mountains blocks come with big established trees and, in a lot of the older streets, original clay sewer pipes with mortared joints. Roots find those joints. Leura and Blackheath are particularly bad for it because of the mature garden plantings. If you are on a block like that, a camera inspection every couple of years costs far less than an emergency dig.

A jetter is a hose that puts water down the line at pressure, with a head that drives itself forward and cuts backwards on the way out. A cable machine with a proper root cutter will also cut roots, so that is not the difference. What the jetter adds is the scour: it strips fat, silt and the softer build-up off the pipe wall on the way back, so you get the bore of the line back instead of a channel through the middle of what was blocking it. A channel is what blocks again first.

Roots are the usual cause up here, so clearing the hole is not the same as clearing the drain.

What the jetter clears

• Tree roots in sewer and stormwater lines, cut back to the wall
• Fat, grease and soap build-up in kitchen and laundry lines
• Silt, sand and leaf litter in stormwater pits and downpipes
• Sludge in long flat runs that never quite self-clean

When jetting is not the answer

If the pipe is collapsed, has lost its fall or is broken, jetting will not fix it, and we will say so on the day rather than sell you a clear that lasts a fortnight. That is what the camera is for. A cracked or root-damaged line that still runs true can often be relined. A section that has lost its fall cannot: a liner follows the pipe it goes into, so a sag has to be dug up and re-laid. You keep the footage either way, and it shows which of the two you are looking at.

On old earthenware it depends on the condition of the pipe, which is why we would rather know what we are working with. Sound clay in reasonable order takes jetting at a head and pressure matched to it. A line already cracked, or holding roots at a broken joint, gets the camera before the jetter.

Every drain has a way in, and on most blocks that is an inspection opening near the boundary. On older places up here it can sit under a garden bed, get paved over, or never have been brought up to the surface at all.

When there is no opening we can use, we dig one out. Worth knowing before the day, because it changes how long the job takes and what the ground looks like afterwards.

If you know where your gully or your opening is, tell Aidan when you call. It saves time on site, and sometimes it saves the digging.