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 Teddington
- 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 Teddington
Victorian terraces plus side-return extensions: modern kitchens on 1890s drain runs.
Teddington’s drain story is written in its lofts and side returns. The Victorian terraces between the High Street and the river are some of the most extended houses in London: side-return kitchens, loft bathrooms, utility rooms, all plumbed (enthusiastically, and sometimes optimistically) into drain runs laid in the 1890s for a house with one cold tap. When a modern family kitchen with a dishwasher and an American fridge drains into a four-inch clay pipe with original joints, the pipe eventually files a complaint. That complaint usually arrives via the downstairs gully, on a Sunday.
Around Bushy Park and the Grove Gardens streets, mature trees do their usual quiet work on the joints, and the closer you get to Teddington Lock the more the river’s water table joins in. We also see a very Teddington special: beautifully landscaped gardens where the drain’s inspection chamber was paved over during the makeover, which turns a twenty-minute clear into a treasure hunt. (We bring the metal detector. Genuinely.)
None of this is a criticism, Teddington; extend away. Just know that TW11 is covered 24/7 by people who find your 130-year-old pipework fascinating rather than annoying, quote before starting, and put the flowerpots back where we found them.
We cover all of Teddington (TW11) — from Teddington Lock, Broad Street, Bushy Park and across Hampton Wick, Twickenham, Strawberry Hill. Being genuinely local means we already know what Teddington's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Teddington →