If your blocked drain is causing you both mental and physical discomfort, you are entirely justified to consider it a significant inconvenience. If a drain is blocked in your home or office, drainage of water and other liquids can be painfully slow and water may eventually start to come back up. This leads to a variety of unpleasant situations, such as dirty water and nasty odours. Asthma and other allergies can also be triggered by the airborne bacteria and distinctive bad smell, and contaminated water can lead to an array of skin irritations and a few alarming diseases. Here's why you should act fast, and everything you should know before you do.

A Blocked Drain Can Be A Sign Of Bad Routines

The good thing about drainage problems is that they can indicate lifestyle changes that need to be done to maintain the health of your entire sewage and drainage system. Generally, blocked drains will occur as the result of people flushing the wrong things down the toilet, or pouring food residues down the sink pipe. In Australia, 75% of blocked drains are linked to the flushing of wet wipes.

When small bits of food accumulate in pipes, they create lumps that block the entire system. Oil is also prone to hardening in winter, causing it to form rocks which are practically impossible to remove without professional plumbing expertise. The more this oil hardens, the more the resulting rock can damage your drainage system as high pressures of water move it along the pipes.

DIY Repair Solutions Are Unsafe And Ineffective

A variety of DIY blocked drains solutions, ranging from hot water to the use of toxic chemicals, are depicted online. However, they are unlikely to be as effective as the services of a licensed plumber. Your plumber will potentially have to use sophisticated tools, such as electric drain snakes and water jet machines.

Bad plumbing work can also get you into trouble with your landlord and insurance company. Unless your plumbing work adheres to Australian standards, you may lose your insurance claim in case of a flood or other sewage-related accident. You could also lose your deposit, and have to invest in extensive plumbing work to rectify the problems you might have caused.

A Finishing Note

Blocked drains are no joke: they are both incredibly unpleasant and pose major health risks. To protect yourself and your family, you will need to seek an immediate solution to your blocked drains — before the situation gets worse. But to avoid becoming one of Australia's thousands of DIY plumbing disasters, you may want to enlist the services of a professional plumber.

Contact a plumber today for more information about blocked drains.