Blocked drains cleared
across Penrith

Often it is not, and this is the single most useful thing to know out here. Sewer and stormwater are separate systems. When a downpour puts more water into the sewer than the main can carry, the whole street's system surcharges and the lowest relief point on your property, usually the yard gully, overflows. Nothing on your property is blocked. If it clears within an hour of the rain stopping and behaves perfectly the rest of the time, that is surcharge. If it is slow on a dry Tuesday, that is a blockage, and it is worth paying to fix. We will tell you which on the phone rather than sending a jetter to rain.

The gully is doing its job. It is deliberately the lowest opening on the property so that when the line surcharges it relieves outside rather than through a shower or toilet inside. The thing to check is that nothing has raised the ground around it or buried it under mulch or a garden bed, because a gully sitting below the surrounding soil cannot relieve, and the next lowest opening is usually the shower floor. Keeping the grate clear and the surround above ground level costs nothing and prevents the expensive version.

Roots, most of the time. The post-war streets through Cambridge Park, Kingswood, Werrington and South Penrith run earthenware sewer laid in short lengths with mortared joints, on blocks big enough to have grown substantial trees over the top of it in the sixty-odd years since. Clay soil that shrinks back through a dry spell opens those joints slightly, roots find the moisture, and once they are in they regrow after every clear. That is why a repeat blockage is a pipe problem, not a habits problem.

Yes, and it changes what we bring. Jordan Springs, Caddens, Claremont Meadows and the newer parts of Glenmore Park are plumbed in modern PVC in continuous runs with no mortared joints for roots to exploit. A repeat blockage there is far more likely to be a fall problem, a construction defect, or something physically lodged in the line than roots. On a house still inside its builder's warranty period that distinction is worth money, so we check it before quoting you for anything.

On a soft soap or grease build-up in a basin, sometimes. On the things that actually block a sewer here, roots, wipes, a collapsed section, no. They generate heat, they sit against the blockage rather than passing through it, and on old earthenware or a PVC trap that heat does real damage. They also make our job harder and less safe, because the water we then have to work in is caustic. If you have already poured one in, say so when you call.

Most straightforward clears through an existing access point land between $150 and $400. A stubborn line that needs the jetter is $400 to $700. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 and comes with the footage. You get a fixed figure before anything starts, and if we get there and find it is street-side surcharge rather than your blockage, we tell you that and you are not paying us to fix something that is not broken.

No, and they are the most common avoidable cause of a blocked sewer we attend. They clear the S-bend, which is all the label really promises, then they fail to break down the way paper does. They catch on anything rough in the line, and on a jointed earthenware sewer with roots already in it there is plenty to catch on. Once a few collect, everything else builds behind them. Same for paper towel, cotton buds and cat litter sold as flushable.