How Does A Professional Plumber Clear A Blocked Drain?

When you leave that smelly, slow-draining, overflowing drain alone it can cause some serious damage to your pipes and plumbing system. Most of the time, when it’s time to call your local plumber, the drain is chronically blocked and you have no chance of clearing it with good ol bi-card and vinegar.

So, how does a professional plumber clear a blocked drain? Well, we have a few trusty methods for you right now.

Ways A Professional Plumber Can Clear A Blocked Drain:

1. Hand Tools 

Our highly trained tradesmen can resolve a common blocked toilet, basin, or shower with drain rods to shift the blockage. In most blocked drain jobs, this is an effective method of clearing the immediate issue and preventing ongoing issues. Each drain has a unique style of tool used to clear the blockage effectively and our eastern suburbs based team is ready and equipped with the right tools for the job!

2. Electric Eel 

Electric Eel’s a tried and tested method of clearing most blocked drains. They’ve survived the test of time for a reason – they work. Although quite heavy and bulky, we could not live without them! Our local plumbing team have the experience to use this tool fast, efficiently, and safely.

3. Chemical Treatment 

For some blocked drains, the safest and easiest way to clear it is with a chemical treatment. This is a safe, non-invasive way to get your lines flowing again. How does it work? Well, a strong, acidic, herbicide is fed down an access point, killing and removing any organic matter. Grime, grease, leaves and tree roots can dissolve to a certain extent.

4. High-Pressure Jetting To Help Clear A Blocked Drain

More complicated blocked drains may need the assistance of our state-of-the-art high-pressure jetting system that operates at 5000KPA. This baby can cut through tree roots and other debris, common around the eastern suburbs.

Jet blasters use high pressurised water to force out junk through your pipes where other methods fail. Jet blasters can travel up to 60 metres through your pipes and force almost anything out. This method is used for more complicated blockages or pipework that is larger than 150mm in diameter.

5. Hydro jetting 

If our investigation proves that you have heavy tree root intrusion, solid grease build-ups, or partially collapsed drain/s then we’ll use Hydro Jetting.  The beauty of using Hydro Jets for blocked drain cleaning is that they can reach blockages that a standard power drain cleaner cannot get to. Using high-pressure water, our Hydro Jetting equipment can defeat stubborn blockages.

Hydro Jets also give the pipes an intensive clean and scrub. Hydro Jets are generally the best form of drain cleaning, however, this much power plus the higher operating costs mean it isn’t the right choice for the majority of standard blocked drain issues. We usually reserve hydro jet cleaning for the more stubborn of blockages where standard power drain cleaning equipment has not been successful in clearing the blockage.

6. CCTV Camera 

Our crew is also skilled in CCTV camera operation. So, once the blockage is cleared, we can use a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera to identify the cause of the blockage, and the extent of the damage. With our highly advanced locating equipment we can also pinpoint the exact spot above ground of the blockage, including the depth and direction of flow. To read more about why we use CCTV, click here.

Understand What Can And Cannot Go Down A Drain

The best way to clear a blocked drain is to prevent a blocked drain!

Understanding what can and cannot go down the drain is the first step.

HERE’S A LIST OF THE MOST COMMON KITCHEN SCRAPS THAT DEFINITELY DO NOT BELONG IN YOUR DRAINS

• Coffee Grounds — coffee grounds are not easily dissolved and will block drains faster than you think.
• Pasta, Rice, And Bread Offcuts – these materials expand with water and will not move easily through a drain. These food products will be caught in your drains super-fast.
• Meat And Poultry Scraps (Including Fish Bones) – The fat from any meat scraps gets caught easily and will create a backup of debris. Fishbones only make the clog worse as they get caught in any small blockages that already exist.
• Vegetable Ends, Peels, And Cut-Offs — If you’ve ever peeled a carrot over the sink and thought “it’s fine” as you’ve watched it disappear you wouldn’t be alone, but vegetable ends and peels block up your drain in no time, especially when they get caught with other kitchen scraps.
• Eggshells – not easily ground up and a big one for blocking other materials from moving through a pipe!

The Next Preventative Step: Pipe Relining

If you want your drains permanently fixed without destroying your gardens, driveways, or concrete slab then pipe relining might be the best solution. At Proximity Plumbing, we can use a two-part epoxy, which is pulled through the pipe and expanded to leave a hard fibreglass shell, which cannot be penetrated by roots. Although only relatively new to Australia, pipe relining has been tried and tested overseas for over 25 years and has a life expectancy of over 50 years.

At Proximity Plumbing, we typically reline pipework ranging from as small as 50mm up to 250mm in diameter with some of the liners being over 100m in a continuous run. This prevents any joints in the line and ensures a strong bond when repairing sewer, stormwater, earthenware, copper, and cast-iron pipes. Having no joints ensures in most cases better protection from root penetration than newly laid pipes.

We use only the leading products from Germany called Brawoliner®  for our inversion pipe relining as it’s been tried and tested overseas for so many years. As well as using the best products, we also have invested in training overseas and state of the art trucks specifically designed for relining works so we can serve our eastern suburbs community in the best possible way.

So there you have the ways in which the experts get to work on clearing your blocked drains and pipes!

Preventative Maintenance Plan To Help Clear A Blocked Drain

Special note from our team: “Not all plumbing issues are emergencies! At Proximity Plumbing, we believe that regularly scheduled, preventative plumbing can be the key to avoiding costly interruptions. Rather than waiting for an eventual breakdown or blockage, identify risk areas early by organizing regular maintenance and review of your plumbing systems. We offer an extensive list of routine preventative maintenance services to ensure that you can stay on top of your plumbing system care and reduce the feared emergency call to your local plumber”.