Blocked Toilets & Sinks

A blocked toilet or sink is more than just a minor inconvenience; it disrupts your daily life, creates hygiene risks, and, if left untreated, can lead to overflowing water and significant property damage. At TrueFlow, we understand the urgency of these situations. We treat blocked facilities as a priority, offering rapid response times to get your home or business back to normal as quickly as possible.

Whether you are dealing with a slow-draining sink in your kitchen or a toilet that threatens to overflow every time you flush, our team of experienced drainage engineers is equipped to handle it. We serve homeowners and businesses across Bracknell, Wokingham, Ascot, and the surrounding Berkshire area.

Signs You Have a Blocked Toilet or Sink

Identifying a blockage early can save you time, money, and the stress of a full-blown emergency. While some signs are obvious, others can be subtle indicators that a problem is building up in your pipework.

• Slow Drainage: This is often the first sign. If your sink takes longer than usual to empty, or the water level in your toilet bowl rises high before slowly draining away, you likely have a partial blockage.
• Rising Water Levels: When you flush the toilet, does the water rise dangerously close to the rim? This indicates a significant obstruction preventing normal flow.
• Gurgling Sounds: If you hear strange gurgling noises from your shower or bath when you flush the toilet, this suggests trapped air caused by a blockage in the main soil stack or sewer line.
• Foul Odors: Unpleasant, sewage-like smells lingering in your bathroom or kitchen are a clear sign that waste is not clearing effectively from your pipes.
• Recurring Clogs: If you find yourself using a plunger every week, you haven’t solved the root cause. There is likely a deeper obstruction that needs professional attention.

Common Causes of Blockages

Understanding why blockages occur can help in preventing them. At TrueFlow, we encounter a wide range of issues, but the most common culprits include:

1. The “Non-Flushables”

By far the most common cause of blocked toilets is the flushing of items that are not designed to break down in water. Even products labeled as “flushable” wipes often fail to disintegrate, snagging on pipe joints and creating a net that catches other debris.

• Baby wipes and cosmetic wipes
• Sanitary products
• Paper towels and cotton buds
• Dental floss

2. Kitchen Waste and Fats (FOGs)

For sinks, the primary enemy is FOG (Fat, Oil, and Grease). When poured down the sink hot, grease is liquid, but as it cools in your pipes, it solidifies into a hard, sticky mass. This restricts the pipe diameter and traps food particles, eventually causing a total blockage. Coffee grounds and rice are also frequent offenders, expanding or accumulating in u-bends.

3. Scale Build-up

In hard water areas like Berkshire, limescale can accumulate on the inside of pipes over years. This rough surface catches toilet paper and waste, narrowing the passage and making blockages more likely. Urine scale can also build up in toilet U-bends, restricting flow.

4. Foreign Objects

We have retrieved everything from children’s toys and air fresheners to mobile phones and jewelry from toilets. These solid objects can lodge firmly in the S-bend or soil pipe, requiring specialist tools to remove without damaging the ceramic.

5. Structural Issues

Sometimes the blockage is a symptom of a structural defect. Displaced joints, collapsed pipes, or tree root ingress can catch waste material. If we clear a blockage and it returns quickly, we may recommend a CCTV Drain Survey to check the condition of your pipes.

Why You Need a Professional

While a trusty plunger or a bottle of chemical cleaner can fix minor, shallow clogs, they often fail to address stubborn or deep-set blockages. In fact, incorrect use of chemicals can corrode your pipes, melt seals, and damage the glaze on your ceramic ware.

Using high-street drain rods without training can also be risky; it’s unfortunately common for us to attend jobs where a homeowner has snapped a rod inside the pipe, turning a simple unblocking job into a complex retrieval operation.

TrueFlow engineers provide:

• Correct Diagnosis: We don’t just clear the symptom; we identify the cause.
• Safe Methods: We use mechanical and hydro-dynamic tools that are safe for your plumbing.
• Deep Cleaning: We remove the entire obstruction, ensuring the pipe is flowing at full capacity.
• Hygiene: We handle the mess so you don’t have to, sanitizing the area once the work is done.

Our Blockage Clearance Solutions

We use a tiered approach to unblocking, starting with the least invasive methods and escalating only if necessary.

Manual Tools and Professional Plunging

For local blockages in U-bends or toilet pans, we use heavy-duty professional plungers and augers (snakes). These tools allow us to physically grab and remove obstructions like wipes or toiletries without needing to dismantle the toilet.

Mechanical Rotaries (Electro-Mechanical Cleaning)

For harder deposits like scale or roots, we use mechanical rotary machines. These feed a flexible steel cable with a cutting head into the pipe. The head spins at high speed, scraping the pipe walls clean and pulverizing hard obstructions. This is particularly effective for descaling stack pipes and removing urinal scale.

High Pressure Water Jetting

If the blockage has moved into your external drains, we deploy our vehicle-mounted High Pressure Water Jetting units. Water at pressures up to 4000psi scours the pipework, cutting through grease, roots, and silt, washing the debris away to the main sewer.

Preventive Maintenance Tips

Once we have cleared your blockage, we want to help you keep it that way. Here are simple steps to maintain free-flowing drains:

• The 3 Ps: Only flush Pee, Poo, and Paper. Everything else goes in the bin.
• Bin the Fat: Never pour cooking oil or fat down the sink. Let it cool and scrape it into the food waste bin.
• Use Strainers: Install simple mesh strainers in your kitchen sink and shower waste to catch food scraps and hair.
• Regular Hot Flush: Once a week, pour a kettle of hot (not boiling) water mixed with a little washing-up liquid down the sink to help dissolve minor grease buildup.

Areas We Cover

TrueFlow is proud to be a local company. We don’t just work in these areas; we live here too. We provide fast, reliable service to:

• Bracknell
• Wokingham
• Binfield
• Warfield
• Crowthorne
• Sandhurst
• Ascot
• Maidenhead
• Windsor
• Camberley
• …and all surrounding villages in Berkshire.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to unblock a toilet? We believe in transparent pricing. For standard blockages, we offer fixed prices where possible. If the job is more complex (requiring jetting or excavation), we will provide a clear quote before proceeding. All work comes with a 6-month guarantee.

Is it an emergency? If you have only one toilet in the house and it is blocked, or if the water is overflowing and risking damage to your floors or ceiling, we classify this as an emergency. Our team is available 24/7 to assist you.

Will unblocking make a mess? Drainage work can be messy, but our engineers are trained to minimize disruption. We use protective sheets and overshoes, and we carry industrial cleaning equipment to sanitize the area after the blockage is cleared. We aim to leave your bathroom cleaner than we found it.

Can you remove scratches from my toilet bowl? We use non-marking tools to protect your ceramics. However, if previous attempts with metal coat hangers or DIY rods have scratched the bowl, we cannot remove these scratches, though we can certainly clear the blockage.

Book Your Clearance Today

Don’t let a blocked toilet or sink ruin your day. Contact TrueFlow for professional, fast, and friendly service. We are the trusted local experts in Bracknell and beyond.

Call us now on 0808 175 7440 or use our online form to request a quote. Get your true flow back today.