Blocked drains cleared
across Liverpool

More than anything else you could tell us. Liverpool has two very different housing stocks and they fail in opposite ways. A house from the 1960s Green Valley estates has jointed earthenware sewer with mature street trees over it, so the answer is almost always roots. A house in one of the growth area estates has solvent-welded PVC that roots cannot get into at all, so it is almost never roots, and it is very often something left in the line during construction. Same symptom, completely different job. Telling us the age of the house at the booking is what gets the right gear on the van.

Because the drain was in the ground before the house was finished, and a lot happens over it in between. Render and mortar get washed off tools, tile adhesive and grout go down the nearest gully, sand and silt wash in through an uncapped riser, and offcuts get dropped in. None of it dissolves. It sits in the low point of the line from day one, and it does not become a blockage until enough normal use builds up behind it, which is often a year or two after you moved in. A camera settles it quickly, because construction debris looks nothing like a root mass or a fat build-up.

It may not be. Residential building work in New South Wales carries statutory warranties under the Home Building Act, and the period runs from completion of the work: six years for a major defect and two years for everything else. Those warranties also pass to later owners for whatever is left of the period, so you do not have to be the original purchaser. Whether a particular blockage falls inside that is not a plumber's call to make, but the camera footage and a written report are what any claim needs, and we hand both over as a matter of course. Get the evidence first, then take advice.

That pattern is the older estates, and it means roots. Earthenware sewer was laid in short lengths with a joint between each one, and every joint that weeps slightly is a reliable source of water in the ground. The street trees planted through Green Valley when the estate went up in the 1960s are now sixty years mature, with root systems to match. Cutting clears the line but leaves the joint open, so they return on roughly the same schedule. Sealing that joint with a liner is what ends it.

No. They pass the S-bend, which is all the label really promises, then fail to break down the way paper does. In an older line that already has roots in it they are much worse than usual, because the roots give them something to catch on. In a newer line with construction debris sitting in it, they do exactly the same thing against the debris. Either way they turn a slow line into a sudden one.

Rarely, and the root-killer products are worth being sceptical about. They do not remove the mass, they do not close the joint the roots came through, and the tree regrows. On a solid obstruction they simply sit on top of it. They also generate heat and make the water we then have to work in caustic, so if you have poured something down, tell us when you call rather than after we arrive.

Most clears through an existing access point are $150 to $400. Root cutting is $400 to $900 depending on how much is in the line. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 with the footage handed over. On a newer home we will usually recommend the camera even on a first blockage, because if it turns out to be construction debris the footage is worth considerably more than it costs.