Blocked drain clearing in Northcote
The plane trees along High Street and the liquidambars through Northcote's side streets are doing real damage to century-old earthenware sewers, and we camera more root intrusion here than anywhere else we work. Nine times in ten the blockage sits at a joint a few metres out from the house, under the nature strip rather than under your floor.
What does blocked drains involve?
Ring us and we will clear a blocked drain the same day, usually within two hours. We jet the line rather than punching a hole through the blockage, then run a CCTV camera its full length so you can see exactly what caused it — tree roots, a cracked clay joint or set fat — before any repair is quoted.
The essentials
- Response
- Same day for blocked toilets and sewer overflows, next morning for slow drains
- Clearing from
- $280 including the camera inspection, with standard access
- CCTV inspection
- Included on every clearing job, footage emailed the same day
- Equipment
- 5,000 psi jetter, root-cutting heads, located CCTV camera with sonde
- Guarantee
- 12 months on a cleared line where the camera shows no structural defect
How it works
Why drains block in the inner north
Most homes between Northcote and Preston are still served by their original 100mm vitrified clay sewer, laid in short lengths with mortar or rubber-ring joints. Clay does not corrode, which is why it is still in the ground after a century, but every joint is a seam that roots can find once the ground dries out and the mortar shrinks. Add a row of mature street trees and you have the classic inner-north blockage: a fine root mat through a joint three or four metres from the house, catching paper until nothing moves.
Kitchen lines fail differently. Fat and food waste cool and set on the pipe wall, narrowing the bore over years until one big Sunday roast finishes it. Stormwater blocks with leaf litter and silt, and often with roots as well, where a downpipe joins an old agricultural line under the garden.
Clear it, then look at it
We clear with a high-pressure water jetter and a root-cutting head, working from an inspection opening near the boundary, or from a gully or roof vent where there is no opening. Jetting scours the pipe wall back to full bore instead of leaving a hole in the middle of the blockage, and that is the difference between a drain that runs for years and one that blocks again in six weeks.
Once it is running we put a CCTV camera down the line and record the lot. The camera head carries a sonde, so we can mark the position and depth of a defect on the surface with a locator, which matters enormously if the fix involves digging. You get the footage and a plain-language read of it: what is a genuine defect, and what is simply an old pipe looking old.
Repair options once we know
Root intrusion at a single joint can often be cut, jetted and then sealed with a short cured-in-place patch, with no excavation at all. A pipe that has dropped, lost part of its invert or collapsed needs that section opened up and relaid in PVC, and we will say so plainly rather than selling a patch that is going to fail. Long runs of tired clay can be relined end to end where digging up an established garden is the worse option.
Worth knowing: the sewer drain inside your property boundary is yours to maintain, and the main in the street belongs to the water authority — Yarra Valley Water in this part of Melbourne. If the camera shows the problem is in their asset, we tell you, help you log it, and you are not paying us to fix their pipe.