How to prevent blocked drains

Preventing blocked drains costs almost nothing, which is more than can be said for clearing them. After nearly forty years of pulling the same things out of the same pipes across Berala and the inner west, Terry can list the causes of nearly every blockage he has ever cleared: fat, wipes, hair, food scraps and tree roots. Five culprits. Every habit below targets one of them.

In the kitchen

• Scrape plates into the bin and wipe greasy pans with paper towel before washing. Fat that goes down warm sets hard inside the pipe.
• Keep a jar or old tin for cooking oil and pan drippings, and bin it once it sets.
• Fit a sink strainer, the simple mesh kind that costs a few dollars, and empty it into the bin rather than rinsing it through.
• Keep rice, pasta, coffee grounds and flour out of the sink. They swell or bind with grease into a paste that plungers struggle with.
• Run hot water with a squirt of detergent through the sink once a week to keep grease moving along the line.

In the bathroom

• A hair catcher over the shower drain saves you the annual hair-mat excavation.
• Only the three Ps get flushed: pee, poo and paper. Wipes sold as flushable still snag on pipe joints and roots, and they are now one of the biggest causes of sewer blockages in Sydney. The same goes for cotton buds, dental floss and paper towel.
• Keep small toys away from open toilets. Terry has retrieved dinosaurs.

In the yard

• Plant trees and large shrubs well away from sewer and stormwater lines, five metres or more for thirsty species like figs, willows and paperbarks. Roots rarely break a sound pipe, but they exploit joints that already weep, and once inside they grow fast.
• If you are not sure where your sewer runs, the Sydney Water service diagram for your property shows the line, and it is worth checking before planting anything substantial.
• Keep gutters, downpipe grates and stormwater pits clear of leaves, especially heading into storm season.

Once a year or two

• Older properties with clay or earthenware sewer pipes benefit from an occasional CCTV camera inspection, typically $200–$400 in Sydney, which shows root intrusion and pipe damage before it turns into a Saturday night emergency.
• Treat slow drains as the early warning they are. A sink or shower that gradually drains slower is a pipe narrowing, and it is far cheaper to deal with at that stage.

None of this is complicated, and none of it requires products. The drain-care industry would love to sell you enzyme sachets and monthly chemical treatments, but a strainer, a fat jar and some flushing discipline outperform all of them. Where prevention genuinely stops working is underground: roots and collapsed pipes do not care about your habits, and that is when a camera inspection and a proper repair, sometimes a reline, become the sensible spend. For everything above ground, the habits are the whole game.