What are the long-term effects of a blocked drain? When we think of maintaining our homes, we probably think about keeping our roof intact, ensuring that the window fascias remain sound and checking our brickwork for pointing issues. We are less likely to keep an eye on our drainage systems.
Sydney weather can be unpredictable at the best of times, and often when it rains… it absolutely pours. Wet weather means that more drains can become blocked. While a drain blockage may seem like a minor annoyance, the long-term effects can prove costly, and damage the integrity of your home.
Leaks
Your pipes need to remain crack-free. However, torrential rain, flooding and temperature differentials can cause high pressure to build up and a drain blockage can be the result. Leaving this blockage to fester can make your pipework crack resulting in a leak forming within the home. It can be tricky to spot where the leak is coming from, meaning that mould and dampness can develop on the walls of your living spaces.
A damp can be a much more costly problem to fix than a blocked drain. You may need to repoint some of your brickwork, replaster, replace joists and insert a damp course. This is labour-intensive and takes time resulting in your home feeling like a building site for a few weeks. By ensuring that you call a drainage engineer the moment your sense a problem in your pipes, you can save yourself money and stop your home from becoming too affected by the drain blockage.
If you live in a period property, your pipework will naturally be older, making them more susceptible to damage because of a blocked drain. Call a local Sydney-based engineer as soon as you think a drain blockage is developing to prevent your more vulnerable older pad from sustaining damage. An expert will carry out a full assessment of your drains before carrying out any necessary repairs.
Waste Resurgence
There’s nothing worse than noticing a foul odour within your home but being unable to find out where it is coming from. The number one cause of sewerage-like smells in your home is a waste resurgence. This means that the waste that should be removed from your humble abode is becoming trapped within your pipework. A blocked drainage will result in this waste not just blocking up but actually returning to your home. If you think about the worst blocked toilet that you’ve ever seen and consider that this could be in your own home, you will want to get a survey of your drains done immediately.
With a blocked drain in Sydney, you need an expert that is reliable with a quick response time. If you have a drain blockage, drainage specialists will utilise CCTV technology to place a camera into your pipework and guide it along your drainage system to carry out a full survey and spot the points where blockages are present. They can also be utilised in a preventative sense to replace any pipe joints or segments that are vulnerable to blockages.
Structural Damage
Ignore a blocked drain at your peril because the chances of structural damage increase the longer you leave vulnerable pipework without a full survey being carried out. Leaks can cause dampness which not only causes fungal spores to permeate into your home but can also result in joist and brickwork damage.
Joists and timbers within the structure of your home can become rotten, weaken and can cause subsidence to develop. This can have a massive detrimental impact on the saleability of your pad. While it may seem a little melodramatic, a blocked drainage could result in your home becoming unmortgageable. To ensure that you don’t fall into a blocked drain trap, it pays to get your drains and pipes cleaned on an annual basis. When searching for an expert, go for a drainage firm in Sydney that provides exceptional customer service, reliability and experience.
How Will A Plumber Unblock A Drain?
- Drain rodding: Rodding a drain is a basic treatment that is cheap and effective if blockages are relatively new and there is little compacted material to remove. Steel rods are pushed through the pipework to remove a drain blockage and restore normal waste management.
- Drain Jetting: For more compacted blockages, an expert will use a hose fire jet of powerful water to clear the blockage. This is more costly than rodding but can cut the repair time of your pipes.
- Tanker Jetting: If there is a lot of debris that has caused the pipework to fur up and solidify, a tanker jetting service is needed. Larger drains that are vulnerable to blockages will need more water firing down them at high pressure (up to fifty gallons a minute) to help pipes unblock effectively.
- Electro-Mechanical Cleaning: If water is not a feasible option when trying to unblock your drain, an electro-mechanical cleaning option may be considered. Steel cables with large blades attached are forced down your pipes with the aim of cutting away the debris that is causing the blockage. This is an effective option when the debris is compacted or hard, or when there isn’t a mains water supply to power a jetting method.
Blocked Drain Prevention
To ensure that you keep your pipework in excellent condition, it pays to have an annual checkup of your drains in Sydney. This is especially important for those properties that are older or haven’t been inhabited for a little while. You have a service for your boiler each year, so why not do the same with your drains?
The main culprits for drain blockages are hair and excess tissue buildup. Tree roots can also break through pipework and invade your drainage spaces causing a blockage. While it can be difficult to mitigate the risk of a drain blockage, you can take care of your pipework by getting a team of experts to assess and survey your drains to keep them in tip-top condition.
At Plumbing Services Sydney, our professional engineers are on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call us or message us today for free advice!
