Blimey more problems, help needed ASAP please

Brock_and_Roll

As a B&B owner and regular pipe-unblocker I can give a few tips.....

Firstly regardless of whose responsibility it is, buying a set of your own rods (£30) is a good investment and enables you to tackle the problem as soon as you see the signs, eg toilet water level rising.

Secondly the biggest culprit is terms of what blocks pipes seems to be wipes i.e. baby wipes, wet wipes etc. These are pretty tough (so your finger does not go through them) and as a result they "catch" on anything abrasive in the pipe eg a rough join, root etc. Other wipes then join the party along with bog paper and sewage and eventually the pipe blocks completely.

I find the second biggest offender is waster from washing machines. This basically looks like congealed washing powder. Over time this stuff can produce really bad blockages to it is good to rod the drains at least twice a year to keep on top of this as obviously you cant stop using washing machines etc

G_M

sacha28 wrote: »

Thanks guys for all of your responses

The sub-contracted firm arrived near midnight last night and found the blockage 2 doors down. It was caused by 2 things.....
1) It's apparently a fibre pipe (?) lay down in the 70's that is well known to blister, causing things to deposit on these blisters blocking the drain. and 2) Someone in the row of houses has chucked loads of cooking fat (looks like lard apparently) down their sink which has gone hard and collected on a rather large blister in the pipe. How annoying, and there is no way of knowing which house is at fault.

A friendly chat with each of the neighbours to make sure they all understand what happened, and that it can recur.

If you can get agreement from them all not to pour hot waste fat down the sink but to let it cool and then put in the rubbish, you'll be fine.....

Trouble is people think because the hot fat washes down the plughole, they think it's gone! It hasn't. It goes just far enough down the drain to cool, and then solidifies........

sacha28

I know exactly what you're saying G_M, some people aren't overly bright! I don't really know where to start with regards to talking to the neighbours, the drain serves quite a few houses (apparently, I don't know anything about drains!) and we only know the neighbours directly next to us as we've not been here that long.
Would SWW not want to replace the pipe? I spoke to our LA this morning to tell them what had happened (and also that it was all sorted so it was just a courtesy call really) and she said this has been an on-going problem for the 8/9 years they've looked after the property!!

Mayflower10cat

Is all the pipework 'pitch fibre'? Or just some of it??? At some point the pitch fibre pipe will denature and need replacing, their lifepan isn't very long. In our last house our drains kept backing up and were rodded five or six times, until we had a CCTV survey done. The pitch fibre pipe had squashed down to almost flat - the camera could 'just' fit through. We were fortunate in that our buildings insurance covered the cost of replacing the drains. It was a run of about 100ft of pipe under the garden and out to the sewer in the road.