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Rhyse from Plumbdog here!
I’m currently out in North Perth. A bloke has called me up to go and look at an issue that he’s got with the drain in the upstairs bathroom basin. Let’s see how much hair and toothpaste are in it!
These pop-up plugging ways are the worst. They always get stuck. Mmm, yummy. I should be able to pop that up, hopefully. Oh jeez. Ah, it is one of those ones. I don’t really know what’s happened here. Somebody has made a makeshift plug. It’s meant to pop up and down, which this thing doesn’t do because the spring has been removed. No good.
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Hello everyone, it’s Darius at Plumbdog!
I’ve got a blocked drain out in Kallaroo to go and resolve now. I know I’ve done this one before and it was pretty interesting. That was a few years ago so let’s see what’s happened and what’s developed since then.
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I was out here a while ago, actually, it was a couple of years ago. We’ve got a jump-up here, which runs down to the sewer behind the shed. There we go, that’s what we’re dealing with. Yeah, tree roots and a broken junction. We are getting somewhere now! We’ve got that jump-up cleared and it looks like there’s a lot of damage in the back of it. Following drain cleaning, we’re just going back through to make sure that’s all still clear. That’s the sewer main and that’s all the tree roots that have come out of that junction.
Ooh, looky! It’s the brace from the camera. Lucky now!
That’s what we’re left with. You can see that’s got a hole in the back of the junction, combined with all the other breaks where the roots are getting in. So that’s definitely going to all come back, but it’s clean. We’ve got no more roots left in there. That’s good.
Well, we’ve got that drain cleaned up nicely. The roots know it’s there and they’re just going to grow straight back in unless we can get repairs made to that drain, which we can do even though there’s a shed on the top of it. Probably the best thing for the homeowner long-term is to think about getting that done.
Thanks for watching guys. Take care. I’ll see you for the next one
Hi everybody, it’s Richard at Plumbdog, so I’ve just come out to a property where the customers just brought me around the back of the house. He’s showing me his hot water system and he’s asked me to come out here and service it. He seems to think it’s working quite hard, he can hear sort of water travelling through and he sort of thinks his water bills are a bit higher than usual.
Before I get started, if the water bills are quite high and you can hear running water this will point in me towards the fact that there might be a bit of a water leak instead of an actual system fault.
I’m going to go out to the front of the property and just going to check if we’re losing any water there. At the water meter, I’m just going to perform a five-minute test and see if it’s moving at all. If the needle moves, there’s a water leak. Every full circle, every time it goes around 360 degrees that’s one litre.
It’s not moving much but it’s definitely moving. You can see that needle is moving – it’s just moving really slowly. If you blink, you’d miss it. This is the reason we do tests over five minutes.
I’m going to a see if I can figure out where that leak might be. I’ll isolate the hot water system first and see if it’s on the hotline or the cold line. I have retested as I’ve isolated the water cold feed into the hot water system to see if it made any difference and it didn’t. That means is that there is a small water leak but it’s on the cold line not the hotline.
This would mean that the job has now transitioned from hot water servicing to leak detection, which are two totally different specialized services of ours. Have a look at the video to determine the next steps utilised to resolve the leak.
In this VLOG, Rich shows us what was causing the blockage and how he unclogged it using his specialised equipment.
EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK
A quick check of the various drains in the house verified that the blockage was contained to the kitchen sink, as this was the only one backing up. A further investigation found that the overflow gully located on the other side of the home was also backflowing, leading Rich to believe that the gully pipe was blocked, rather than the shorter kitchen waste pipe.
The gully pipe was situated under the slab of the house, running the entire width of the home and the blockage could be anywhere along that pipe.
MORE THAN TAKING THE PLUNGE
The first step the Plumbdog team will take is to use a plunger down the gully pipe to see if the blockage can be dispersed. This can lower the water level, making it easier to use other equipment. Plumbdog will never stop at using just a plunger, as further investigation is always required for blockages and this would be considered a quick fix, not a permanent one.
GREASE IS THE WORD
The next step involves feeding a drain jetter 2-3 metres down the gully pipe to clear out any immediate build-up. Rich then switched to his rigid nano cam/CCTV, but the camera lens was quickly covered in grease, confirming that the blockage was due to fats and oils being washed down the kitchen sink.
To prevent any mess inside the home, a towel was placed in the kitchen sink to avoid any splashback that may occur during the next step.
A rear-facing jetter was then fed through the gully pipe, assisted by the CCTV camera to monitor the progress. Metre by metre, the grease was cleared all the way up to the kitchen sink waste pipe.
While retracting the CCTV, it was clear that the gully pipe was now free of any grease build-up and the kitchen sink was draining with ease again.
PLUMBDOG TO THE RESCUE
Grease build-up is a very common problem that can occur over time. While there may be some short-term solutions available, it is important to contact a plumber who isn’t afraid to get their paws dirty to properly clear the build-up in the pipe. Plumbdog has the state of the art equipment to get the best results, so if you’re in the Greater Perth area and are in need of a reliable Perth Plumber, give us a whistle!
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Richard Palmer PL7708 | GF13261
Darius Lawson PL10375 | GF10458
James Paiva PL8022 | GF12480
Electrical Contractor | EC11024
Electrical Contractor | EC7187
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