Cleared the same day where we can, then filmed, and where the complaint is a wet garden rather than a slow fixture, checked in the cheap order first.
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A slow fixture or waste coming back up is a drainage job, and it is the ordinary one. Wipes, fat, hair, and the usual suspects. A machine through an access point deals with it and the camera afterwards tells you whether anything down there caused it.
The call we get out here that is worth handling differently is the wet patch. An area of garden that stays soggy, a section of lawn that never dries, water where nobody expects it.
The instinct is to assume a drain has failed, and sometimes it has. But on a property with automatic irrigation there is a much cheaper explanation to eliminate first. That system runs on a controller whether the garden needs the water or not, and a solenoid stuck part open, or a schedule set years ago and never revisited, will keep an area wet indefinitely.
So the first thing we suggest costs nothing: switch the controller off for a week. If it dries, that was your answer. If it does not, we come and look properly, and at least nobody has paid for a camera to discover a watering timer.
Turn the irrigation controller off for a week before you book anything. It is the cheapest diagnostic on this page.
The single biggest cause of what we clear, regardless of what the box claims about flushability. They stay intact, they catch on anything slightly out of line, and they hold everything that follows.
That is worth saying first because it is the answer most of the time, on this street and every other one.
The rest of this page is about the second most common thing, which on a property up here is not a blockage at all.
An automatic system delivers water on a schedule rather than on demand. It runs whether the garden needs it or not, whether it rained yesterday or not, and whether anybody is awake or not.
Which means a persistently wet area, a soft lawn or water appearing at a low point can be a controller doing exactly what it was told, years ago, by somebody who has since moved.
On these blocks, with gardens this size, reticulation is common and a drainage complaint that turns out to be irrigation is common with it.
A week off, and see whether it dries. That is the whole method, and it costs nothing but the garden looking slightly less pleased with itself.
Turn the controller off entirely rather than to a rest day, because a rest day still leaves a schedule running around it.
If a week off dries the problem up, you have your answer and you have not paid anybody to look for a fault that does not exist.
Each zone on a reticulation system has a solenoid valve that opens when the controller calls for it. One that sticks open keeps watering after the cycle finishes, indefinitely.
It is silent, it is underground, and the water goes exactly where water is supposed to go, which is why it can run for months.
The tell is a zone that is always wetter than the others, or a meter that creeps with everything in the house turned off.
A sewer blockage is indifferent to the weather. It was there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. Trouble that only arrives in a real downpour and eases as it stops is the stormwater side.
On properties under a mature canopy, wet-weather trouble is very often gutters, downpipes or a stormwater pit packed with leaf litter rather than the sewer at all.
That is a much cheaper problem, and it is worth saying which one you have when you ring so the right equipment arrives.
Lift the grate on a stormwater pit and it can look serviceable while passing almost nothing, because wet litter packs down and behaves like a mat rather than a loose pile.
Under the tall forest on this ridge that happens faster than it does on an open block, and not only in autumn. Eucalypts shed all year.
Which is why pits here are worth clearing on a schedule rather than on appearance, once a year, before the wet months rather than during them.
Gradual slowing usually means lost fall or something accumulating, and both are cheaper to deal with while the line is still moving than on the day nothing does.
A fixture that has been getting slightly worse for a year is giving you information. It is the least dramatic symptom on this page and the most useful.
Nobody rings about a slow drain, which is exactly why it turns into a call about a stopped one.
Roots do not break sound pipe. They enter at an opening the ground has given them, and older jointed lines under gardens of this age offer plenty of candidates.
The trees that make these streets worth living on are the same trees whose roots are in the drain, and that is a problem with the joint rather than with the tree.
So the durable repair removes the opening rather than this season's roots, and it does not ask you to take a tree out.
It is the answer that stops you spending money on a problem you do not have. Plenty of people are disappointed by it and it is the best outcome available.
On a property where the question is whether a fault exists at all, the recording is the only thing that settles it, and it is yours whatever it shows.
It also gives you a baseline. If the same line misbehaves in five years, comparing the two recordings answers the question immediately.
On a first blockage that clears easily, it is optional and we will say so. On the third in the same year, it is the only thing that answers the question.
Clearing a line repeatedly without ever looking at it is buying the same afternoon over and over, and it is the one habit that turns a cheap problem into an expensive one.
Where it does find a defect, it also decides the repair, and most open joints can be dealt with from inside rather than by opening the garden.
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.
Position and depth marked, so nobody works from a guess.
What was found, what caused it, and what we would do next.
Inside a fixture or out in the garden. Those are two different visits and the second one has a free test in front of it.
Through an access point where one exists, with the least disruptive method that will genuinely work.
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 something else was putting water into the ground.
Ring and a licensed plumber picks up. We can be moving toward you while you are still talking.
Call 1300 381 569Wipes, comfortably ahead of everything else, whatever the packet says. They do not break down, they catch on anything rough inside the pipe, and they then collect whatever follows. Fat and hair account for most of the remainder inside the house.
It might be, and before we assume so it is worth checking the irrigation. An automatic system runs on a controller whether or not the garden needs it, and a solenoid that has stuck part open, or a schedule nobody has looked at since it was set, will keep an area wet indefinitely. That is a five minute check and it is free to rule out.
Turn the controller off for a week. If the area dries, the answer was the schedule. If it does not, we look properly. That is the whole test and it costs nothing to run.
Yes, while it is still information rather than an emergency. A line that is gradually slowing has usually lost fall or is accumulating something, and both cost less to deal with before the morning nothing moves at all.
Usually not. Clearing goes through an access point, and where the camera shows a defect rather than a collapse it can frequently be repaired from the inside.
Yes, and keep it. It is the evidence behind whatever we recommend, 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 the written findings included.
Tell us whether the problem is inside or outside. If it is a wet area in the garden, tell us whether there is automatic watering, because that changes the first step entirely.
Cleared, filmed, and diagnosed in the order that costs you least.
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