A blocked toilet is the most honest emergency in the house. There’s no pretending it isn’t happening, there’s usually a queue forming, and there is a very specific moment of dread just before you look into the bowl and flush. (Don’t flush. See the steps above. We’ve mopped up too many optimists.)
Here’s what makes us different from every other number you could ring: we genuinely don’t mind. Not in the gritted-teeth, “someone’s got to do it” way. Blocked toilets and sinks are quick, solvable, satisfying puzzles, and the person arriving at your door is pleased to be there. No sighing at you, no “what did you put down here then” interrogation. You’re having a bad morning; we’re having a normal Tuesday.
Toilets block on the usual suspects: wet wipes (even the “flushable” ones, which flush in the same sense that a brick technically flies), kids’ toys, air fresheners that dive off the cistern, and too much paper. Most clear in under an hour with the right tools rather than a supermarket plunger.
Sinks are almost always fat and food in the kitchen, or hair and soap in the bathroom, packed into the trap or the first bend. If more than one fixture is draining slowly at once, the problem is further down the line, and we’ll find it rather than just emptying the trap and hoping.
What it costs: most blocked toilets and sinks in the TW area run £80–£160, with out-of-hours visits from £150. Price agreed before we start, fixed when we finish. If it turns out the real problem is the main drain, we’ll show you, explain the options, and never charge twice for one problem.
What to do right now in Petersham
- Don't flush again 'to see'. If the bowl is full, a second flush has exactly one place to go, and it's your bathroom floor.
- Turn off the water to a filling toilet at the isolation valve on the inlet pipe (small screw or lever), or hold the float arm up inside the cistern.
- For a blocked sink, stop the taps and don't reach for caustic soda. It generates heat, can damage the trap, and makes the pipe dangerous to work on.
- Call us. Describing the problem is our job to make easy, and no, whatever it is, it will not be the worst thing we've seen this week.
Blocked Toilet & Sink help, local to Petersham
A Georgian village on the flood plain: conservation-area gardens, two centuries of pipework and a water table that sits just under the lawn.
Petersham is the village in TW10 between Richmond Hill and Ham, Georgian houses and Victorian cottages set beside the meadows that the Thames floods on purpose. It is one of the prettiest places we work and, from a drain’s point of view, one of the dampest. The water table here is never far below the grass, and it rises every winter into the backfill around pipes that were laid before anyone had heard of a camera.
The result is silt. A Petersham run with a dropped joint, and most have one by now, lets fine sediment in each wet season until the bore closes. Clearing it is straightforward. Stopping it means finding the joint, and on camera the entry point is usually obvious: a lip of clay with a little delta of silt behind it.
Everything we do here is done with the garden in mind. Surveys run through the existing chambers, repairs are relining rather than digging, and the footage is kept for the insurer, because period houses on a flood plain do end up claiming. We cover Petersham, Ham and the Richmond Hill slopes at any hour, and we promise not to put a van on the meadow.
We cover all of Petersham (TW10) — from Petersham Meadows, Richmond Park (Petersham Gate), River Lane and across Richmond, Ham, Richmond Hill. Being genuinely local means we already know what Petersham's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Petersham →