Unblock drain or plughole

Unblock drain

How to unblock a drain (warning: usually involves getting messy)

Where is the blockage?

(First: get some thick rubber gloves. You are dealing with water which might have old food and poo in it, and be swarming with germs)

What’s blocked? Just a sink, or everything? If your bath is blocked, but the basin drains fine, then the blockage is likely to be just below the bath plughole. If nothing in your house drains, then the blockage must be somewhere downstream of the lowest thing in the house, possibly outside the house.

If the blockage seems to be just below a sink or bath or shower, try to access the trap under the sink or shower or bath, (will be some sort of U or P-shaped pipe, often of white or grey plastic). Place a large bucket under the pipes and unscrew the bend at each end. See if it is blocked with something. Bear in mind, if you have a full bath, you run the risk of the entire contents of the bath pouring out of the unscrewed pipe. So bail the bath out first (into the garden, ideally, so you aren’t putting more water in your possibly-blocked drains).

You can also try using a bottle of drain unblocker which you can buy in the supermarket. Failing that, an old-fashioned plunger might do the job (but never attempt to plunge a drain which still has drain unblocker fluid in it: that stuff is very acidic and you don’t want it splashing around).

Time to get the rods out?

If the blockage is not in the pipe immediately below a sink or bath or shower, it must be elsewhere in the drains. Check the first drain cover outside your house – is there water sitting in it? If so, you have a blockage downstream of that drain, which you might be able to dislodge using rods. If that drain is clear, though, you must have a blockage in the drainage system in your house, but not in the easily accessible bits under the bath/sink/shower. Try rodding upstream from that drain. Failing all the above, you might need to disconnect a loo in order to get rods more easily into the drains in your house.

Don’t fancy any of that? Then book one of our plumbers online and he or she will unblock your drain in a jiffy.