Putney's mansion blocks share stacks between many flats, and a blocked toilet on a lower floor is often a stack problem rather than a pan problem. We check before anyone plunges, because forcing a shared stack sends the blockage into the flat above's bath.
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 Putney
- 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 Putney
Riverside terraces, mansion blocks on the main roads and big houses up West Hill: a water table at the bottom and long runs at the top.
Putney, SW15, climbs from the river: Victorian terraces along the Lower Richmond Road and the Embankment, Edwardian avenues up West Hill, mansion blocks along the Upper Richmond Road and big houses towards the Heath. The bottom of the hill is a water table story and the top is a long-run story, and the mansion blocks in between are a shared-stack story all of their own.
By the river, old clay joints take on silt each winter as the ground saturates, and the Embankment gullies back up whenever the Thames is high and the surface water system has nowhere to send the rain. We clear the private run and say plainly when the river is the limit rather than the pipe, because clearing a clean drain and invoicing for it is not how we want to be remembered.
The mansion blocks are the local speciality. Many flats, one stack, and a blocked toilet on the second floor that is really a stack problem four floors tall. We check before anyone plunges. Up the hill, the big houses have long runs under mature gardens and the Heath’s trees have found the joints, and the camera finds which joint. We cover Putney and the Heath around the clock from the Barnes and Roehampton side.
We cover all of Putney (SW15) — from Putney High Street, Putney Bridge, the Embankment and across Roehampton, Barnes, Wandsworth. Being genuinely local means we already know what Putney's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Putney →