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 Richmond
- 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 Richmond
High-value period property, mature street trees, and root ingress in century-old clay runs.
Richmond’s drains are as period as its houses. The Victorian terraces off Sheen Road, the grand villas on Richmond Hill and the cottages in Petersham mostly run on clay pipework that predates the First World War, and in conservation areas nobody has ever been keen to dig it up. That’s exactly where relining earns its keep: we fix the pipe from the inside and the listed garden wall never knows we were there.
The borough’s magnificent trees are, professionally speaking, our biggest local rival. The planes and horse chestnuts around Richmond Green and the park edges push fine roots into every available pipe joint looking for water, and a root-bound drain re-blocks on a schedule until the ingress point is found and fixed. A CCTV survey here is rarely boring. (For us. We accept this is a niche form of entertainment.)
There’s also a practical Richmond reality: with property values around Richmond Hill and Kew among the highest in the country, foul water backing up into a basement kitchen does eye-watering damage per hour. When something does go wrong, it’s worth it being fixed quickly and properly documented. We’re local, we answer 24/7, and we arrive genuinely pleased to see a difficult drain.
We cover all of Richmond (TW9, TW10) — from Richmond Park, Kew Gardens, Richmond Bridge and across Kew, Petersham, Ham. Being genuinely local means we already know what Richmond's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Richmond →