Cleared the same day where we can, and with the right equipment already aboard, because in this suburb whatever the job needs has to arrive with the plumber.
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Clearing a drain is not one job with one tool. A cable, a high pressure jetter and a camera are three separate pieces of equipment, and which of them is on the van when we pull up is decided entirely by what was said on the phone.
In most suburbs getting that wrong is an inconvenience, because somebody drives twenty minutes and comes back. Here it is a return visit, because there is nothing in Cheltenham to collect and nowhere to collect it from.
So four questions, and none of them are technical. Which fixtures are affected and whether it is all of them or one. How long it has been happening. Whether it has done this before. And whether there is an external access point and roughly where it is.
Not knowing an answer is fine and it is still useful. Telling us you do not know where the access point is means we allow time for finding it. The expensive version is when nobody realises the question needed asking until somebody is already standing in your laundry.
Say so rather than guessing. Knowing that you do not know is genuinely useful information.
Which fixtures are affected, whether it is raining, whether it has happened before, and whether the property has an outside access point. Those four answers between them decide the equipment, the method and roughly the price.
None of them require you to know anything about plumbing, and all four get asked on the phone rather than discovered in your driveway.
If you do not know one of them, say so rather than guessing. A guess sends the wrong machine, and there is no supplier in the suburb to correct it from.
A cable machine, a jetter and a camera do different jobs and they travel separately. A cable clears an obstruction. A jetter cuts and scours a line that has coated up. A camera tells you which of those you actually needed.
Which one comes is decided before anybody leaves, from what you say on the phone. Get that wrong and the visit becomes two visits, which is nobody's idea of a good day.
A camera on its own is worth booking deliberately, not as an afterthought. On a recurring problem it is the only thing that answers the question, and clearing the line first can remove the evidence of what caused it.
A single slow basin and a whole house misbehaving are different problems with different causes. One is local to that fixture and its trap. The other is the main line out, and the whole property is telling you so.
It is the first thing worth establishing and the easiest thing to check. Run the bathroom, run the kitchen, and see whether the trouble follows you around the house.
The other useful test is the lowest fixture in the house. If the main line out is restricted, the lowest point is where it shows first, which on most of these houses means a laundry tub, a shower or a floor waste.
A sewer blockage is indifferent to the weather. It was there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. Something that only appears in a downpour and clears once the rain stops is behaving like stormwater, not sewer.
On blocks with this much tree cover, wet-weather trouble is very often gutters, downpipes or a stormwater pit rather than anything wrong with the sewer at all. Saying which it is saves you paying for the wrong machine.
Sewer and stormwater are separate systems and it is illegal to connect one to the other, so a genuinely mixed symptom is worth investigating rather than clearing. It occasionally turns out to be exactly that sort of connection, made decades ago by somebody who thought it was helpful.
Once is an event. The second time is a coincidence. The third time in a year is a defect describing itself, and clearing it again is buying the same afternoon over and over.
Say so when you book. It means the camera comes on this visit rather than the next one, and you find out what is actually there instead of paying to postpone the question.
Keep a rough note of the dates if you can. Three blockages in a year at the same fixture is a much stronger piece of information than a vague sense that it happens a lot, and it changes what we recommend.
With an outside inspection opening, the work is done from the garden, quickly, and nothing indoors is touched. Without one, we work back through a fixture or lift a pan, which takes longer and costs more.
That is worth saying up front rather than discovering on the day. If you do not know whether you have one, it is usually a capped riser near the boundary or against the house.
If there genuinely is not one, installing an access point is worth considering on its own merits. On a property that has blocked more than once it pays for itself the next time, and it means no future visit involves lifting anything indoors.
Cheltenham has no shops, no hardware and no trade counter. There is nowhere within the suburb to duck out to for a part, and the nearest useful supplier is a drive away through Beecroft or Pennant Hills.
So the van gets loaded from your description instead. It is the practical reason the questions on the phone are longer here than they might be somewhere with a supplier on the corner.
The upside is that it makes us careful. The questions are longer, the van is loaded properly, and the job gets finished on the visit you booked rather than the one after it.
Wipes remain the largest single cause of what we cut out of drains, whatever the box says about flushing. They do not break down, they snag, and they hold everything that follows.
The other half of it is age. Much of the housing here drains through jointed clay laid well before anybody thought about tree roots, on blocks large enough that the run to the boundary is long. Long jointed runs under mature trees are exactly where root ingress turns up, and a camera is the only way to see it.
Fixed price agreed before anything starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges.
Through an existing access point where the property has one.
The recording is yours regardless of what it shows.
For what a cable alone will not shift.
Found and marked, so nobody has to look for it again.
What was found, what caused it, and what we would do next.
Which fixtures, how long, has it happened before, and where the access point is. A minute on the phone, and the van gets loaded accordingly.
With whichever tool the answers pointed at, through an access point where there is one.
So the cause is on record rather than described, and you can see it yourself.
Including when the honest answer is that the pipe is sound and nothing further is worth doing.
Ring and a licensed plumber picks up. We can be moving toward you while you are still talking.
Call 1300 381 569Four things, and they take a minute. Which fixtures are affected, whether it is all of them or one. How long it has been going on. Whether it has happened before. And whether there is an external access point and where. Those four answers decide what equipment comes off the van.
It does here more than in most suburbs, because there is nowhere in Cheltenham to go and get anything. A cable, a jetter and a camera are three different pieces of equipment, and which of them is on the van when we arrive is decided by what you said on the phone.
That is a perfectly normal answer and it is still useful, because it tells us to allow time for finding it. It is the not knowing that we did not know that costs everybody a return visit.
Wipes, comfortably ahead of everything else, whatever the packet says. They do not break down, they snag inside the pipe and they collect everything behind them. Fat and hair make up most of the rest.
Yes, while it is still information. A line that is gradually slowing has usually lost fall or is accumulating something, and both cost less to deal with beforehand.
Yes, and keep it. It is the evidence behind whatever gets recommended, and footage of a sound pipe is as useful an answer as footage of a defect.
Clearing a blocked drain is $150 to $400. A camera inspection is $250 to $450. Jetting is $400 to $700. Locating and marking a defect is $250 to $500, with written findings included.
Which fixtures, how long, whether it has done this before, and where the access point is. Four answers, one minute, and it usually becomes a single visit.
Cleared, filmed, and told plainly what is actually down there.
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