Most homeowners will at some point in time encountered a slowly draining sink. The plug comes out, but the water does not vanish down the plug hole with its usual speed. Instead, the murky water has begun to drain away more and more slowly and, somewhere down below, there is a slow bubbling and gurgling noise repeatedly echoing back up the drainpipe.
If this sounds familiar, or you have simply noticed that your shower water isn’t draining away as fast as it used to, and you are increasingly finding yourself stood in a shallow pool of water, it is probably time to have your drains inspected by a Parkinson plumber.
Often the cause can be as simple as a build up of food debris, hair, dirt – basically anything that goes down the pipes – but occasionally it can be something far more serious.
Virtually all drainage and sewage systems enter, then travel underground, so that we don’t have to admire their beauty, day in day out. Problems however arise because the shallow ground that they run beneath isn’t necessarily rock solid, and over time external factors can become the cause of drainage problems. Not surprisingly in Australia, intense heat causes the top layers of earth to dry, shrink and become cracked. We have all seen images of dried-up riverbeds with exposed cracked mud flats and this behaviour is much the same underground. When the earth dries like this deeper down the contractions and shifts of the clay or soil can create slow but forcible movement and can consequently cause cracks or fractures in drainage pipes, no matter what material they are made of.
Additionally, pressure from above, such as heavy traffic or construction work can also cause drains to crack or break and this is where the larger problems begin.
Typical scenarios seen by drain inspection plumbers include the build-up of debris where the crack has occurred. Something snags on a sharp edge and over time other dirt, fat and oil, food waste and debris that’s been washed from the sink can build to create a blockage. From the outer of a cracked pipe, tree roots can of course follow and exploit the water and nutrients that are coming out of small cracks, and quickly exploit them. It is not uncommon for large tree root ‘nests’ to form inside a cracked pipe and very effectively stop the flow of wastewater.
It goes without saying that the problematic blockage won’t necessarily be on your property, however from the compromised location, the backing up of water will cause you problems.
So, if your drain does become blocked, think twice. If flushing a bottle of drain cleaner down the plughole does not shift it, there could be a more serious problem and it could be some twenty or thirty meters down the line. In order to correctly diagnose the problem before deciding on the best course of remedial action, it is realistically time to book a drain camera inspection Brisbane.
A camera inspection will allow the full scope of the problem to be identified, and it could well be that with professional drain cleaning equipment such as an electric eel or jet rodder, your plumber is able to shift the problem. However, if they identify a cracked pipe, the chances are that even if you shift the blockage, the problem will occur again, often sooner rather than later.
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