Why your drain keeps blocking

Fat is the usual one

Fat goes down the sink as a liquid and does not stay one. It cools on the way along the pipe, sets on the wall of it, and the next wash-up lays down a bit more.

None of that is visible from the kitchen. You find out when the water stops going down.

Hot water and washing-up liquid do not deal with it either. They move it along to the next cold stretch of pipe and leave it there.

Let it go hard in an old tin or a jar and put it in the bin.

Wipes do not break down

Whatever the packet says about flushing them, wipes come out of a drain in one piece. They catch on anything rough inside the pipe and then hold on to everything arriving behind them.

Cotton buds and dental floss do the same. So does hair, once shower soap has bound it together.

All of it belongs in the bin. In a house that blocks twice a year that one change is often the whole fix.

When the pipe itself is the problem

Sometimes nothing going down the sink is the cause.

A length that has settled or sagged holds standing water, and solids drop out of the flow wherever that happens. Roots get into the joints of old clay pipe. Scale narrows old pipework from the inside, and a cracked length snags whatever tries to pass it.

You cannot see any of that standing over an open manhole.

A camera tells you which it is

A camera down the run shows what is holding things up and how far along it sits.

The fix then follows what the camera found. Jetting takes fat and scale back off the wall of the pipe. A dropped or broken length has to come out and be replaced, which is a bigger job and a longer day.

Ask what was on the screen before anyone packs up.

When to ring

Ring when the same drain goes twice in a year, when two fittings are slow at once, or the moment anything comes back up indoors.