Cleared the same day where we can. And if it only does it in a downpour, we check the gully before we charge you to clear a line that was never blocked.
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A drain backing up in this suburb is one of two things, and they are not treated the same way.
The first is an ordinary blockage. Something went down that should not have, or a root found a joint in an old earthenware line, and the water has nowhere to pass. It backs up whenever the line is used, rain or no rain. We clear it and it stays cleared.
The second only happens in weather. The main itself is over capacity, and instead of your water going out, the system's water is coming back. Nothing on your property is blocked at all. Where it comes up depends entirely on whether the house has an overflow relief gully and whether that gully is still the lowest opening.
Telling them apart before anyone starts work is the whole job here. One of them is a clearing. The other is a levels problem, and running an eel through it fixes nothing before the next storm.
Tell us whether it was raining. It is the single most useful thing you can say on the phone here, and it decides what we bring.
Marrickville sits in a catchment of roughly eight square kilometres that drains through a piped system rather than an open watercourse, because the swamp it was built on was drained and covered over.
So when heavy rain arrives faster than the pipes can take it, the water has nowhere to go but up, and it comes up through the lowest openings it can find.
That is surcharge rather than blockage, and it is a completely different problem from something stuck in your line.
Somewhere outside, usually against the bathroom or laundry wall, there should be a grate set lower than the lowest fixture inside the house.
Its entire job is to let a surcharging system release outside rather than through your shower. It is a safety valve and it only works if it is clear and it is lower than everything indoors.
Go and find yours. It is two minutes on a dry day and it is the difference between water in the garden and water in the hallway.
Much of this housing stock predates the requirement, and nothing forced a retrofit when the rules changed. So the absence of one is common rather than unusual.
Installing one is ordinary work and it is worth considering on a property that has had water inside during heavy rain.
It does not stop a surcharge. It decides where the surcharge comes out, which is the only part of it anybody controls.
The commonest fault we find is not a missing gully but a buried one. Garden beds get raised, paving gets laid, mulch accumulates, and the grate ends up level with or below the surrounding ground.
Once that has happened it can no longer do its job, because the relief point is no longer the lowest opening on the system.
Clearing it and re-establishing the levels around it is a short piece of work and it is one of the most useful things on this page.
Trouble that arrives only in sustained heavy rain and clears when it stops is very likely surcharge, and clearing a sound line will not change it.
Trouble on a dry Tuesday is a blockage, and it is yours to clear. Those are different jobs with different equipment and different prices.
Saying which one you have on the phone is worth more here than anywhere, because paying to clear a clear line is the outcome nobody wants.
The original drainage under a lot of this suburb is earthenware in short lengths with a joint roughly every metre, laid a very long time ago on ground that was once swamp.
Those joints are where roots enter, where material catches, and where ground movement has been working for a century.
So there are two distinct problems here, and the useful first step is knowing which one you have rather than treating both the same way.
A single slow basin is that fixture and its trap. Several, or the lowest fixture in the house, is the main line out telling you so.
Once is an event. Three times in a year on a dry day is a defect describing itself, and clearing it again is buying the same afternoon.
Keep a note of the dates and the weather. On this ground that combination is genuinely diagnostic.
Roots do not break sound pipe. They enter at an opening the ground has given them, and jointed earthenware on ground that shifts offers a great many.
Street trees through this suburb are mature and the lots are narrow, so a tree is frequently very close to a line.
The durable repair removes the opening rather than this season's growth.
Wipes remain the largest single cause of what we cut out of drains regardless of what the packet claims. They stay intact, they snag, and they hold everything behind them.
Kitchen fat is the slower version, cooling onto the wall and narrowing the bore until a line that had been getting worse for a year finally stops.
On an old line already carrying silt from a century on soft ground, both cause trouble sooner than they would on a modern pipe.
Whether you have a defect, a surcharge problem, or both, and where the relief point actually sits relative to everything else.
Those look identical from a flooded bathroom and they have completely different answers, one of which involves spending nothing on your own pipes.
The recording is yours whatever it shows, and on this ground knowing which problem you have is worth more than the survey costs.
Quoted at a fixed price before it starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges. If the symptom is storm-only, ask about the gully check first, because it is the cheapest thing on this list and it is often the actual answer.
Hand tools or an electric eel through an existing access point. Most one-offs land here.
Find it, uncover it, check the spill height against the lowest fixture inside.
Mechanical cutting back to clean pipe wall in old earthenware, priced on what is in there.
Down the line with the footage handed over, showing which joints are open.
Bringing the riser back above ground so it is the lowest opening again.
The first question, and here it genuinely sorts the job. Storm-only symptoms point at the gully and the main, not at your line.
Before assuming the line is at fault we locate the relief gully and check whether it is still the lowest opening on the property.
If it is a real blockage we clear from the closest existing access so nothing comes back through the house while we work.
Plainly. A blockage we cleared, or a levels problem that will repeat every storm until the gully is sorted.
Stop using every fixture on that line, the washing machine included. If it is raining hard, say so when you call. It changes what we bring and what we look at first.
Call 1300 381 569Often it is not, and that distinction is worth money here. A blockage backs up whenever the line is used. If it is fine on a Tuesday and comes up through the shower during a downpour, the more likely story is the main surcharging and your house having nowhere to release it. Clearing a line that was never blocked costs you a call-out and changes nothing before the next storm. Tell us the weather when you ring and we will know which job we are coming to.
It is a capped riser in the ground outside, usually near the bathroom or laundry wall, and it is the release valve for the whole house. When the sewer surcharges it is designed to lift and spill there, outside, on the ground. A lot of the older housing through here was built before that was required and never had one fitted. If you do not have one, the lowest fixture inside the house becomes the relief point instead, and on this stock that is usually a ground floor shower, a laundry tub or a downstairs toilet.
No, that is it working. A gully that spills outside in heavy rain is doing precisely the job it was installed for, and the alternative is that the same water comes up inside. The one thing worth checking is the height. The spill level has to sit at least 150 mm below the lowest fixture in the house, and gullies get buried over the years by garden beds, new paving, turf and mulch. A gully raised or covered until it is no longer the lowest point has quietly stopped protecting anything.
Marrickville sits in a valley of about eight square kilometres that drains to the Cooks River through four outfalls, and most of that journey is through pipes rather than open ground. There is very little soft surface left to soak anything up. Heavy rain arrives in the system in minutes rather than hours, which is a different thing from a river flood: it comes up fast, it goes down within the hour, and it can happen to a property nowhere near the water.
Council tags properties for flood-related development controls, and the threshold is specific: a one-in-a-hundred-year event putting water deeper than 0.15 metres across more than 10% of the property. That tag attaches to the property and follows the title, so it is worth knowing before you renovate rather than after. It is a planning matter rather than a plumbing one, but it tells you what your drainage is up against.
It usually does. Plumbing retrofitted into a building that was never designed for it tends to run in long horizontal pulls to reach a connection point that was fixed decades earlier, with less fall than a house would have. Less fall means solids move slower and anything fibrous gets a chance to settle. It also means the lowest fixture is often at slab level with nothing below it, so the question of where a surcharge would go matters more, not less.
Most clears through an existing access point are $150 to $400. If the line is old earthenware and the cause is a root at a joint, mechanical cutting runs $400 to $900 on how much is in there. A camera inspection is $250 to $450 with the footage handed over. If the symptom is storm-only, ask for the gully checked first instead: that is a much smaller job and it is frequently the actual answer.
Tell us whether it was raining, and whether there is a capped riser somewhere outside near the bathroom or laundry wall. Those two answers usually settle which problem this is before we arrive.
Fixed price agreed before we start, and a straight answer on whether this is a clearing or a levels job.
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