Blocked Sink in London
Kitchen sinks block with grease, bathroom basins with hair and soap, different blockages, same result.
Cleared properly through the trap and waste run, not just plunged into next week.
Blocked sink in London: what the price includes
- Trap-out clearing. The trap comes off and the waste arm gets cleared to the stack, not a poke, a clean.
- Both directions checked. A sink that gurgles when the bath empties has a shared-waste issue, we check the join, not just the bowl.
- Grease habits ended. The kitchen sink that blocks quarterly has a cause; we’ll show you what came out and what changes it.
- Standing-water safe. Chemical-free clearing, important, because half the sinks we visit have already had caustic soda poured in.
- We look past the trap. Anyone can clear a bottle trap. If the blockage is beyond it, in the branch, the stack or the gully outside, clearing the trap buys you a fortnight. We establish how far down it sits before deciding whether this is a ten-minute job or a drainage one.
Local conditions we work around
Hard water quietly makes London sink blockages worse. Scale roughens the inside of the waste pipe and gives fat and food something to grip, so runs fur up and narrow over years rather than blocking cleanly in one event. In flats and conversions the kitchen has frequently been moved away from the original stack during a side-return extension, leaving a long shallow-fall waste run that will block repeatedly until the fall or the route is corrected.
Where we work in London
Same price and the same guarantee in every area below. Each has its own page with the streets we cover.
Questions people ask
What does clearing a sink cost?
There is no call-out charge. It is £110 for the first hour, then £45 for each additional half hour, plus the cost of parts, and the same at any hour of the day or night.
Why does it smell even when draining fine?
Biofilm in the overflow and waste, clean the visible trap all you like, the overflow channel is the culprit. It's a five-minute extra during the visit.
Boiling water and soda crystals, fine to try?
Soda crystals and hot (not boiling, on plastic) water are the one home remedy we endorse for grease. Caustic soda is the one we beg you to skip, see the drain guide for why.
Will caustic drain cleaner fix it?
On hair in a bathroom trap, sometimes. On kitchen fat, no, it cools and sets further down, adding to the blockage. It also makes the pipework hazardous to open, so please tell us if you have used any before we arrive.
Both my sinks are blocked at once.
Then the problem is downstream of both, in the shared branch or the stack, and no amount of plunging one will help. That is a drainage job rather than a sink job, and it is worth saying on the phone so we bring the right van.
How do I stop it happening again?
Fat into a jar rather than the sink, a strainer over the plughole, and a kettle of hot water plus washing-up liquid weekly. Unglamorous, free, and it prevents almost every kitchen blockage we get called to.