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 Wimbledon
- 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 Wimbledon
Two towns in one postcode: the Village on the hill with long runs under big gardens, and the terraces and flats below it on shared Victorian clay.
Wimbledon, SW19, is two places with different pipes. Up the hill, the Village and the Common are large Victorian and Edwardian houses on big plots, with long private runs, mature gardens and the Common’s oaks exploring every joint. Down the hill, the Broadway, South Wimbledon and Wimbledon Park are Victorian and Edwardian terraces, many converted into flats, plus post-war estates and new blocks around the station. We ask which Wimbledon you are in before we choose the van.
Hill calls are about distance and roots. A blockage on a thirty-metre run under a lawn is nowhere near a gully, rods will not reach it, and the camera has to find it first. Repeat blockages are almost always a root mat at a joint the clay soil has opened, and lining that joint is what ends the annual visit. With basements and extensions going in all over the hill, a survey before the works is the cheapest decision in the project.
Down-the-hill calls are about sharing. Converted terraces put four kitchens on one Victorian run and the ground-floor flat is the first to know when the top flat pours the fat away. We clear from the external chamber, jet rather than rod, and give the freeholder footage rather than an opinion. We cover all of SW19 at any hour from the Putney and Kingston side of our patch.
We cover all of Wimbledon (SW19) — from Wimbledon Village, the Common, the Broadway and across Southfields, Raynes Park, Putney. Being genuinely local means we already know what Wimbledon's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Wimbledon →