In the Tonsleys and the streets around the Common, Victorian cottages have had bathrooms added wherever they would fit, often on long shallow wastes to the stack. Those wastes block on hair and wipes long before the main drain does, and the fix is clearing the right pipe.
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 Wandsworth
- 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 Wandsworth
A river valley town: the Wandle, a riverside full of new blocks, and Victorian cottages in the Tonsleys on clay runs that predate all of it.
Wandsworth, SW18, runs from the Thames at Wandsworth Town up the Wandle valley to Earlsfield and across to the Common, and the drains come in three distinct generations. The Tonsleys and the streets around the Common are Victorian cottages on original clay. Southfields and Earlsfield add Edwardian houses and 1930s blocks. The riverside has filled with large new developments whose drains are plastic, communal and, for the first few years, full of builders’ leftovers.
New-block calls usually come from a managing agent at an awkward hour: the car park gullies or a ground-floor unit backing up because grout, wipes and a traffic cone’s worth of debris have met at the one shallow bend in the communal run. We clear it, film it and hand over a report that makes the snagging conversation with the developer very short.
Old-house calls are about shallow waste runs and shared clay. Victorian cottages have had bathrooms added wherever they fitted, and the long, nearly flat waste pipe to the stack blocks on hair and wipes long before the drain outside does. The Wandle valley is wet ground, the clay has moved, and the camera finds the joint behind a repeat blockage and plots where your pipe becomes a shared lateral drain. We cover Wandsworth, Earlsfield and Southfields around the clock.
We cover all of Wandsworth (SW18) — from Wandsworth Town, Southside, the Tonsleys and across Putney, Earlsfield, Southfields. Being genuinely local means we already know what Wandsworth's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Wandsworth →