Why the cheapest drain clearing option might not be the best.
If you have a blocked sink, shower, toilet, bath, basin or stormwater drain in your house, you might have had a go at clearing it yourself. Maybe you tried a plunger. Or one of those chemical products you buy from the supermarket and pour down the drain to try and unblock it. Maybe you tried to get out your garden hose and poke it down the drain to try and unblock it.
If you tried all these things you might find they simply don’t work.
A lot of the time these methods don’t work is because generally:
- You have no idea what is causing the blockage
- You have no idea where the actual blockage is located
- You have no idea of the condition of your drain and how this is affecting the blockage
Now sometimes the blockage can be obvious, like in a toilet. (We’ll come back to this one.)
But most of the time people actually have no idea.
However, often people THINK they know what’s causing it.
Some soap and hair all mixed up together blocking the shower.
Some fats and oils and grease mixed together and blocking the kitchen sink.
Some leaves blocking the stormwater drain in the garden.
Now it MIGHT be true these are the cause of your blockage but if they were in most cases a plunger or a chemical drain clearer or both would work together to clear the drain.
So if it doesn’t clear easily or properly using these cheap alternatives, what is the probable reason?
The most likely situation is this – the thing you THINK that is blocking your drain is NOT the thing that is actually blocking it.
It might be causing part of the problem but if it doesn’t clear easily then you have something more serious going.
Usually that ‘more serious’ problem is something you can’t see yourself. (You don’t have x-ray vision to see underground so you don’t really know what it happening inside your drainpipes deep underground.)
What you can see is just a symptom, not the cause. Sure there might be some hair in your shower drain. There will probably be some fat and grease and oil in your kitchen sink drain. And there probably will be some leaves in your stormwater drains.
But deep down in your drain there could be a much bigger problem that has been developing for quite some time.
Most often the real cause of a blocked drain are tree roots. All tree roots love two things – nutrients and water. They find both in abundance in drains, particularly sewer drains.
But how do tree roots get into your drains? Simple. All it takes is for one of the joints in your drain to crack open slightly over time and the tiniest tree root will find a way to get into the drain. Once it gets in it grows bigger and stronger and forces that slight crack open further and further. Eventually other tree roots will join in and force the crack open even further.
Soon the entire joint of the drain can be forced completely apart and tree roots start pouring in, each one in search of the constant stream of water and nutrients that flow through a drain.
Tree roots might get in other ways. Earth movement or subsidence or other factors can cause a drain to break apart, not just at the joints. Or something heavy on the ground above the drain may make the drain partially or fully collapse.
So your drainpipes can suffer a lot of damage underground. Or they might just be very old and start collapsing themselves because they’ve become brittle.
Whatever the cause of the tree roots getting into your drain or your drain collapsing the truth is a plunger, a chemical drain clearer or a garden hose are NEVER going to dislodge them from your drains.
The reason is simple. Tree roots are strong and tough. If there are many of them, you will never dislodge them without a professional plumber using professional equipment.
How many tree roots could there be in your drain?
How about this many?
Even if the tree roots are not that thick, even just a few thin tree roots cause a problem because they become a trap for anything flowing through the drain. So a small amount of toilet paper gets stuck on them. Then some more. Then some more. And finally you have a real blockage.
(Although toilet paper is designed to break apart in a sewer drain.)
It is more likely you have something like those so-called “flushable wipes” in your drain. They don’t flush and they don’t break up like toilet paper. A couple of those catching on a tree root in your drain can cause you a world of pain.
Same thing with balls of human hair washed down from the shower. Or fats and grease from your kitchen sink. All oil, fat or grease goes hard in the cold and will build up on tree roots, again causing a blockage.
So if you have a serious blockage, after trying all the other methods you might call a plumber. Now many plumbers are professional and will use heavy duty equipment to clear your blockage. But some unfortunately do what is called a “punch and run”.
You’ll find the most dodgy plumbers are the ones that offer to clear a blocked drain for $79, $69 or even $59 online. (But you don’t find out that’s their call-out fee until they get there.)
Instead of putting a camera down a drain to investigate the actual cause of the blockage and how serious it is, so you can plan to use the right equipment to clear it, what some plumbers do is simply put a “snake” or sewer clearing machine down the drain. They run it until it punches a hole through the tree root blockage. You see the water drain away and assume the plumber has “cleared” your drain. But they haven’t.
All they’ve done is open enough of a hole in the blockage to let the water run away. In a few weeks time the tree roots will grow back together again and block up the drain and you’ll have to call the plumber again.
A serious blockage of tree roots can only be cleared by using a water jetter that shoots powerful jets of water (powerful enough to cut through your leg bone) to cut through the tree roots. Or they use a mechanical cutting head that has sharp blades and spins at thousands of revolutions per minute to clear the tree roots fully.
So don’t fall victim to cheap drain clearing tricks.
A professional drain clearing plumber like The Drain Man will always:
- Put a camera down the drain first to analyse the real cause of the blockage.
- Show you the footage from the camera so you can see for yourself what the actual problem is and how bad it is.
- Use the diagnosis they’ve undertaken to guide them in choosing the right equipment to FULLY clear the drain. (water-jetter, cutting head, etc)
- Put the camera down the drain a second time to check the blockage is fully cleared and again SHOW YOU that your drain is now clean.
So don’t waste time with cheap and ineffective drain clearing methods that don’t actually get the job down.
Call The Drain Man. The drain clearing experts with over 30 years experience.
If you have any questions about pipeline inspections, drain clearing or pipe relining at your premises, contact our friendly team. We’ll be happy to help in any way we can.
Drains relined by TDM carry a Lifetime Warranty.
