Why Kensington properties get blocked toilets
Kensington is dominated by tall stucco-fronted terraces and garden-square townhouses, many of them converted into flats or maisonettes. Deep basement extensions are widespread, which puts kitchens, utility rooms and wet rooms below the level of the main drain.
A toilet is the lowest and widest fitting in most bathrooms, so when the drain below is restricted it is usually the first place the problem appears, even though nothing is wrong with the toilet itself.
Below-ground pipework here is often original clay laid in the nineteenth century, with shared laterals running under front gardens and lightwells. Where a basement has been dug out, waste usually relies on a pumped system, so a blockage downstream shows itself first as an alarm or a backing-up shower tray.
Our approach in Kensington
We protect the bathroom before anything else, then work through the possible causes in order.
- Check whether other fittings in the property are draining normally
- Clear the pan and trap with the appropriate tool for the type of blockage
- Where the pan is clear, move to the soil stack and the drain run outside
- Jet the affected section and flush the line through
- Test with a full flush and check for any backing up elsewhere
Front lightwells and vaults make inspection chambers harder to reach than in a standard terrace. We come prepared for restricted access and we take the same care with tiled steps and stone thresholds as we would with any listed frontage.
Signs it needs attention now
- The pan fills and empties very slowly, or rises before it drains
- Bubbling in the pan when a bath or sink empties
- More than one toilet affected in the same property
- A smell from the bathroom that returns after cleaning
- Water appearing at an outside gully when the toilet is flushed
What we see most often in Kensington
- Root ingress into original clay laterals under front gardens and garden squares
- Basement pump chambers filling because the discharge run is partly blocked
- Lightwell gullies overwhelmed by surface water during heavy rain
Most of our Kensington work is for owners of period houses and for the agents who manage converted flats within them. We also attend a steady number of newly excavated basements, where the drainage was installed recently but the run it discharges into was not.
Equipment and what happens afterwards
We carry closet augers and drain rods for work in the pan and the branch, jetting equipment for the soil stack and the run outside, and floor protection for every visit. The order in which those are used is what keeps a bathroom clean, and it is also what stops a minor blockage being pushed further down the line where it is harder to reach.
We test with a full flush and check that nothing is backing up elsewhere in the property, because a toilet that clears while a shower tray fills has not actually been fixed. We also check the pan seal and the cistern fill, and if the underlying issue is the drain rather than the toilet we explain what that means for the building as a whole.
What blocked toilets cost in Kensington
A blocked toilet is normally cleared at the fixed £120 plus VAT rate, with no call-out charge. There is no call-out charge in Kensington, at any hour, and the price you are given on the call is the price you pay.
Areas we cover around Kensington
Kensington sits within our core coverage, taking in W8, SW7, W11 and W14 across Kensington and Chelsea. Average response is 75 minutes, and we operate in Chelsea, Hammersmith, Fulham and Westminster too, which helps when a drain run is shared between properties in different streets.