The signs
It drains slowly
One fixture, or the whole house. One fixture is usually local. Everything at once is further down the line.
It gurgles
Air being pushed back through the water seal in a trap. Something downstream is restricting flow.
It smells
Waste sitting where it should have moved on, or a trap that has been emptied by pressure changes in a partly blocked line.
It backs up
Water rising in a shower or a gully when a toilet is flushed. That one is urgent. Emergency plumbing
Ground that stays damp with no leak on the meter
This is the overlap. If the meter is still with everything off, the property is not losing supply water — so damp ground means water is escaping on the waste side instead, or it is storm water. Storm water and soakwells
What blocks drains in Harrisdale
Harrisdale is a young suburb. It was gazetted in 2007 and the main estate started construction in July 2010, so the drainage here is original PVC rather than the old earthenware you find in suburbs built decades earlier. That matters, because the two fail completely differently.
Earthenware drains crack, shift at the joints, and let tree roots in through the gaps. That is the classic old-suburb blockage, and it is largely not the Harrisdale story.
What we see on newer estates instead:
Build debris
Sand, render, grout or offcuts that went down a line during construction and have been catching material ever since. On a house barely a decade old, this is a genuinely common find.
Fat and food waste
With an average household of 3.2 people here, kitchen lines carry a lot. Fat goes down warm and sets hard further along where the pipe is cool.
Wipes and the things sold as flushable
They do not break down. They catch on anything and build from there.
Ground movement
Newer slabs and newer fill settle. A drain laid at the right fall can lose some of that fall as the ground around it beds in, and a flat section collects what should have kept moving.
Roots, eventually
The gardens that went in with these houses are now ten to fifteen years old. Roots go looking for water, and they find any joint that has been disturbed.
How we clear it and what we do after
Clear the blockage
Mechanically, from the nearest access point, working the line until it runs properly.
Find out why
This is the part that gets skipped elsewhere. A drain that blocked because of fat gets cleared and it is finished. A drain that blocked because a section has dropped, cracked or been damaged will block again, and clearing it repeatedly is money spent on the same problem.
Tell you which one you have
Plainly, on site, and in writing before any repair work starts.
Repair if it needs it
If the line is damaged, you get a written price for the fix and you decide. No call-out fee, and the quote costs nothing either way.
When a blocked drain is actually a leak
Worth separating, because the repair is completely different.
A damaged waste line leaks whenever something drains through it — a shower, a load of washing, a flushed toilet. It does not show on your water meter, because the water has already been through the meter and been paid for. So you get damp ground, a smell, or a patch of lawn that is greener than the rest, with a meter that sits perfectly still.
A supply leak does the opposite. The meter moves with everything off, and there may be no smell and no damp at all if the water is running into sand.
Telling those two apart on the first visit is what stops you paying to dig in the wrong place. How we find hidden leaks
What we do not do
We do not sell a drain camera inspection as a product, and we do not recommend a repair we have not established you need. If clearing the line solves it, that is the job, and we will say so.
Who does it
Tim, the licence holder — plumbing licence 8396, gas licence 13098. HouseWorks Plumbing & Gas works out of Leeming, roughly fifteen minutes away, Monday to Friday from 7:00am to 4:00pm.
Leak detection · Storm water and soakwells · Suburbs we cover