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 Thames Ditton
- 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 Thames Ditton
Riverside village opposite Hampton Court: a high water table, village-centre clay and an island with its own drainage puzzles.
Thames Ditton is the riverside village in KT7 facing Hampton Court, a Georgian and Victorian High Street, cottages along the water, Thames Ditton Island, and 1930s and post-war streets spreading towards Hinchley Wood and Weston Green. The river is the drain nerd’s headline: it keeps the water table high, it keeps the ground around old clay pipes damp all year, and once a winter it lifts enough silt into the joints to close a run that behaved all summer.
Village-centre calls are mostly that. A gully off the High Street that has been fine since March backs up in the first wet November week, and the camera finds a joint with a lip and a little fan of silt behind it. Clearing is quick; lining the joint is what stops next year’s repeat.
The island and the riverside plots are their own adventure. Access is on foot, the runs are long, and the fix has to be done from the chamber because nobody is digging a riverside garden. We bring the long-reach kit, we reline rather than excavate, and we have been known to arrive by the footbridge with a camera reel on a sack truck. We cover Thames Ditton, Long Ditton and Weston Green at any hour.
We cover all of Thames Ditton (KT7) — from the High Street, Thames Ditton Island, Giggs Hill Green and across Esher, Long Ditton, Hampton Court. Being genuinely local means we already know what Thames Ditton's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Thames Ditton →