Blocked drains cleared
across Burwood

Because it was never designed into the house. Burwood's older homes were built before the sewer reached them, with a cesspit in the yard and nothing to connect to. The drainage came years later and had to be threaded around a building that was already finished, so it runs wherever it physically could: around the outside, under a later addition, through a lightwell, doubling back rather than taking the obvious line. It is not bad workmanship. It is what retrofitting into solid masonry looks like.

On a modern house we would often tell you it is not needed for a first blockage. On a Victorian one it is the opposite: it is the cheapest thing you can do. Nobody holds a plan of your drainage, including us, so the alternative to twenty minutes of footage is somebody excavating on an assumption. Digging in the wrong place on a large heritage block costs several times what the camera does, and you still have to do it again in the right place.

Honestly, no, and anyone who says they can has not looked. We can tell you where drainage usually runs in houses of this era, which is a starting point rather than an answer. What we can do is put a camera down, follow it, and mark the route on the surface so you have it for good. That mark is worth keeping, because the next tradesman will have exactly the same problem you have now.

Frequently because that spot is one of the junctions where somebody tied a later addition into the original retrofitted line. Those junctions were made at different dates by different hands in different materials, and they are where a line loses fall, changes diameter, or has a slight step that catches everything passing. Clearing it repeatedly treats the symptom. The footage shows whether it is a defect worth sealing.

No. They clear the bowl, which is all the label really promises, then fail to break down the way paper does. In a line with old junctions and imperfect fall they snag at the first irregularity and build from there, which is why the same house can cope for years and then block monthly once the habit starts.

Rarely, and on pipework this old they do damage. They sit against the blockage rather than passing through, they generate heat, and in aged earthenware and cast iron they attack the pipe about as enthusiastically as the obstruction. If somebody has already poured one down, please tell us when you ring rather than once we have the line open.

A standard clear through an existing access point is $150 to $400. A camera inspection with the route marked on the surface is $250 to $450, and on a house of this age that is the single most useful money you will spend. A jetter on a stubborn line is $400 to $700. We agree the figure in writing before starting.