Blocked Drains in Kensington, Cleared Properly

Kensington's oldest housing dates back to the early 1900s, and a lot of it still runs on original earthenware sewer pipe.

Old earthenware doesn't fail all at once.

A joint opens a hairline crack, then widens a little more with every winter of ground movement.

Once that crack is there, the suburb's sandy soil finds it.

Grains work their way in and settle, the same way silt collects in a gutter nobody's cleaned in years.

Neither fault alone would necessarily stop the flow.

Together, though, a narrowing crack and a steady trickle of sand choke a line completely, and homeowners are often surprised to learn it isn't one problem but two happening in the same spot.

The walk-up blocks that line Anzac Parade add a wrinkle of their own.

Several flats often share one drain line, so what looks like a single unit's problem can actually be sitting further down the shared run, well past that unit's own fixtures.

Get the diagnosis wrong and you clear one unit's pipe, hand back a bill, and the tenant calls again inside a fortnight because the real fault was never touched.

We put a camera down first every time for exactly this reason, whether it's Blocked Drain Repair or a straight CCTV Drain Inspection: see the fault, then decide what actually needs doing.

Water supply tells a similar story here, even though it's a different job entirely.

Plenty of the older houses near the golf course and racecourse boundary still run on their original galvanised pipe, laid before the Second World War and still doing its best a century on.

Two more causes turn up constantly, on top of the earthenware and sand combination.

One, you get a person. Ring any hour and someone real books the visit.

Two, we look before we touch. CCTV runs the line first, so guessing never enters into it.

Three, the number's locked in. Agreed before anything starts, and it doesn't move.

Four, we prove the fix and stand behind it. You see the clear line on camera, and the labour's covered for life.