Cleared the same day where we can, with a camera down the line when it keeps returning. In an apartment the first job is establishing whose pipe it actually is, because that decides who pays.
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Two very different buildings sit inside the same postcode here, and they fail in different ways.
In the towers and unit blocks around the CBD, almost everything drains into a shared stack. One blockage low in that stack affects every apartment above it, and it shows up at the lowest connected fixture, which is why the flat with water on the floor is so often not the flat with the fault. The useful question in a building is never what went down your sink, it is where the obstruction sits relative to your lot.
In the older streets, Chatswood West and the Federation and interwar pockets around it, the story is age. Original cast iron above ground rusting inward and narrowing, earthenware below ground with joints that have opened just enough for roots, under gardens that have had a century to mature.
What both share is the ground. Clearing a blockage costs what it costs anywhere. It is the repair afterwards where sandstone decides the number, and that is the point at which it is worth knowing your options before someone quotes you to excavate.
Tell us whether it is a house or an apartment, and whether anyone else in the building has the same problem. Those two answers usually decide the job before we arrive.
In a unit block the waste from every apartment on a line drops into the same stack, so a restriction low down affects everybody above it regardless of who caused it.
The apartment that notices is usually the lowest one on that line, and it is frequently not the apartment the material came from.
So a blockage in a block is a building problem before it is anybody's fault, and that is worth establishing before the conversation starts.
The older buildings and houses here still run original cast iron. It corrodes from the inside and loses bore steadily over decades with nothing visible from outside.
So the pipe is not only accumulating material, it has less room for it than it started with, and the two effects compound.
That is why a building can go from occasional trouble to regular trouble over a few years with nothing having obviously changed.
The established streets here have very mature planting, and under those gardens are jointed lines that have been in the ground a very long time.
Roots do not break sound pipe. They enter at an opening the ground has already given them, and a century of movement provides plenty.
The durable repair removes the opening rather than this season's growth, and it does it without opening a mature garden.
Clearing a blockage costs the same on any ground. Excavating to fix one does not, and the rock here frequently sits within a metre or two of the surface.
So the difference between a clearance and a repair is much larger in this suburb than it is on soil, and that shapes the whole decision.
It is also the reason no-dig methods are worth understanding properly here, which is covered on the relining page.
Whether it is a house or an apartment. If an apartment, which floor and whether anybody else is affected. Whether there is an accessible opening outside.
Those three decide the equipment, the access arrangements and who should be arranging the work.
None of them is technical and all of them save a wasted visit, particularly in a building where access has to be organised.
A single slow basin is that fixture and its trap. Several, or the lowest fixture in a house, is the main line out telling you so.
In a block, several apartments at once is the stack rather than any one lot.
Once is an event. Three times in a year is a defect describing itself, and keeping the dates is what makes that visible.
A sewer blockage is indifferent to the weather. Trouble that only arrives in a downpour and eases when it stops is the stormwater side.
In established gardens with mature canopy, wet weather trouble is frequently a pit packed with leaf litter rather than the sewer at all.
That is a much cheaper problem, and saying which one you have gets the right equipment first time.
Wipes remain the largest single cause of what we cut out of drains, and on a shared stack the load arrives from every apartment connected to it.
Kitchen fat is the slower version and the same arithmetic applies, and on cast iron that has already narrowed there is less room to give up.
So both of the ordinary causes have more effect in a block than they would in a house of the same age.
Pipework serving one lot is generally that owner's. The stack and the lines serving the building are generally common property.
That distinction decides who arranges the repair and who pays for it, and it is worth settling before anybody is invoiced.
It has nothing to do with diagnosing the fault, and the two questions get answered separately.
Whether the line is restricted by material, by corrosion or by a defect, where that sits, and whether it is in your lot or in common property.
The recording is yours whatever it shows, and for an owners corporation it is the thing that makes a decision possible at a meeting.
Ask for the file rather than a viewing, and keep it with the building's records.
Every job is quoted at a fixed price before it starts. These are indicative 2026 ranges. If the fault turns out to be common property we put that in writing rather than billing the lot owner for someone else's pipe.
Hand tools or an electric eel through an existing access point. Most jobs land here.
High-pressure water where an eel will not do it, or where scale has narrowed the bore.
Down the line with the footage handed over. The right call on a second blockage.
Mechanical cutting back to clean pipe, then a camera pass to show what is left.
Issued with the footage. What a strata committee or an insurer will ask you for.
The first question is which, because in a building the next question is whether the fault is even inside your lot. That changes who we are working for.
We work from the closest existing access point so nothing backs up through the apartment or the house while the line is being cleared.
A first blockage gets cleared. A repeat gets the camera, because on cast iron the question is how much bore is left.
You watch it on the screen, and the written report goes to you and, if you want, straight to the strata manager.
Stop using every fixture on that line. If you are in a unit and a neighbour is running water, tell us, it usually changes the diagnosis before we arrive.
Call 1300 381 569It depends where the fault is, not where the water appeared. The pipework inside your lot is generally the owner's. The shared stack and the drainage below it are generally common property, and therefore the owners corporation's. The complication is that a blockage low in a shared stack surfaces at the lowest connected fixture, so the apartment with water on the floor is frequently not the apartment with the problem. We camera it and hand you the footage, because that is what turns a disagreement with a strata manager into a decision.
That is close to a textbook shared-stack blockage. Their discharge cannot get away past an obstruction further down, so it backs up and finds the lowest opening available, which is your floor waste. It is not caused by anything you did, and clearing your own trap will not fix it. This is a common property matter in almost every case, and it needs to go to the building manager rather than be paid for out of your pocket.
Roots and corrosion, in roughly that order. The Federation and interwar houses through Chatswood West and the surrounding streets are a century old in places, running original cast iron above ground and earthenware below. Cast iron rusts from the inside and the scale narrows the bore. Earthenware joints open just enough for roots, and this area has very mature trees. Neither is anyone's fault, it is what happens at that age.
Because of the rock. Chatswood sits on Hawkesbury Sandstone, often within a metre or two of the surface, and it is hard, measured up to around 70 megapascals. Clearing a blockage costs the same anywhere. It is the repair afterwards, if the line actually needs work, where the ground decides the bill. That is the reason relining matters more on the North Shore than it does in the clay: it avoids the expensive part entirely.
On soap or grease in a basin, sometimes. On what actually blocks a sewer here, roots, a collapsed section, wipes, no. They generate heat and sit against the blockage rather than passing through it, which is bad news for old cast iron and for PVC traps alike. They also make the job less safe for whoever comes next, because the water we then work in is caustic. If you have poured one in, say so when you call.
No, and in a building with a shared stack they are worse than in a house, because one resident's habit becomes everyone's blockage. They clear the S-bend, which is all the label really promises, then fail to break down. They catch on anything rough, and in an ageing cast iron stack there is plenty to catch on. Once a few collect, everything behind them builds up.
Most straightforward clears through an existing access point are $150 to $400. A stubborn line needing the jetter is $400 to $700, and a camera inspection is $250 to $450 with the footage included. You get a fixed figure before anything starts. If it turns out to be a common property fault we will tell you that and put it in writing for the strata manager rather than quietly billing the lot owner.
Tell us whether it is a house or an apartment, and whether anyone else in the building has the same problem. In a building that is most of the diagnosis.
Fixed price agreed before we start, and a written report if the fault turns out to be common property.
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