Blocked drain? Cleared properly, with the cause found, not just pushed further down

A fully blocked toilet or a kitchen sink backing up into the bath below is dealt with as a priority. Tell us what is blocked, whether water is coming up anywhere it should not, and whether there is more than one fitting affected, because that last detail says whether the problem is in one waste pipe or further down the line. If sewage is surfacing inside, stop using water in the property and keep people and pets away from it until it is cleared.

Most internal blockages are cleared on the first visit with hand tools and a drain machine. External blockages in gullies and chambers are usually rodded first and jetted where rodding does not shift them.

Drain work is priced by the job, not by the hour, so a stubborn blockage does not cost more because it took longer. You are given the price for clearing the blockage before the engineer starts. If the drain turns out to be damaged rather than blocked, that is a separate job, quoted separately after you have seen the camera footage. Nothing is added on the day that was not agreed.

Kitchen sinks block with fat. It goes down as liquid, cools in the pipe and builds up in layers until a piece of food closes the last gap. Bathroom basins and showers block with hair and soap. Toilets block with wipes, even the ones labelled flushable, and with the things children post into them. Washing machine standpipes block with lint and undissolved powder.

Each has a different fix: a kitchen waste is often best cleared by removing the trap and clearing the run with a machine, a shower trap is usually a hand job, and a toilet is cleared with a proper closet auger rather than a plunger that just moves the water. Where a fitting blocks repeatedly, the cause is often the pipework: a waste with too little fall, a long run with too many bends, or a trap that has been replaced with the wrong type.

Cafés, restaurants, salons, small offices and communal areas in blocks of flats have the same drains with harder use. A restaurant kitchen without a grease trap, or with one that has not been emptied, blocks its own drain on a schedule. Salons fill traps with hair. Communal bin stores have gullies that fill with leaves and litter. This work is arranged around opening hours where it can be, and where a blockage is recurring the recommendation is a maintenance jet every few months rather than an emergency every few weeks.

High-pressure water jetting pushes a hose with a nozzle down the drain; the jets face backwards, pulling the hose along the pipe and scouring the walls as it goes. It clears fat, scale, silt and roots that rods only poke a hole through, and it cleans the whole pipe rather than just the blockage, which is why a jetted drain stays clear far longer than a rodded one. It is the right tool for external runs, gullies, long kitchen wastes and any blockage that has come back after rodding.

When a drain blocks repeatedly, or clears but drains slowly, or there is a smell or a damp patch near a drain run, a camera survey shows what is actually down there. A CCTV camera is pushed through the pipe and the footage shows cracked pipes, displaced joints, root intrusion, a collapsed section or a belly where the pipe has sunk and holds water. You see the footage and get a report with the position and depth of any defect.

Repairs follow from that: a localised excavation to replace a broken section, a patch liner cured in place over a crack, root cutting, or re-laying a run that was never laid at the right fall. Where the defect is on a shared drain, the report is what you need to agree the cost with the neighbours.

Fat, wipes, hair, scale and roots account for nearly everything. London's hard water adds a layer of limescale to the inside of older pipes that narrows them year by year, so a pipe that took a wipe or two in 1995 will not take one now. Older clay drains crack and let roots in; the roots feed on what is in the drain and grow into a mat that catches everything.

Clearing is matched to the cause: mechanical cutting for roots, jetting for fat and scale, hand clearance and augering for wipes and objects. Preventing the next one is mostly about what goes down: fat in the bin, wipes in the bin, a hair catcher in the shower, and an enzyme dose in a kitchen waste every month if fat is unavoidable.

Blocked drains are attended as quickly as the day allows and you are given a realistic window when you book rather than a promise that cannot be kept. Evenings and weekends are covered for genuine emergencies, which for drains means sewage surfacing, a toilet that cannot be used in a property with only one, or water backing up into another fitting. A slow shower drain is not an emergency and is booked at a normal time at the normal price.