Drain unblocking and clearing in Belgrade

Where the blockage is

The place of the blockage determines both the method and the price, so the first step is to find where it is. When only the sink or only the washbasin drains slowly, the cause is usually in its trap: grease and food scraps in the kitchen, hair and soap in the bathroom. A floor drain has its own trap section under the grate, where hair and sediment collect, and when that is clean and the water still stands, the pipe from the floor drain to the sewer connection is blocked. A WC pan is most often blocked by an object or too much paper in the bend of the pan itself.

When several drains in the flat run slowly at the same time, or water appears in the bath while the sink is draining, the shared horizontal drain is blocked, the pipe that runs in the floor or along the wall from the bathroom and the kitchen to the stack. The stack is shared by the whole entrance: when it blocks, waste water from the upper floors comes out through the floor drain or the WC pan of the lowest flat on that stack. Besides its indoor drains a house also has a yard drain, usually with an inspection chamber, which clogs with leaves, roots and silt, especially after heavy rain.

How it is cleared: by hand or with a cable

The trap of a sink, washbasin or bidet is cleared by hand: it is removed, cleaned and put back. With a floor drain the grate is lifted, the trap section is cleaned and the pipe is cleared to the sewer connection, and a damaged grate is replaced as a separate line. A WC pan is cleared by hand, in the bend of the pan itself, and if the object has gone further, the drain behind the pan is cleared with the cable. Anything deeper is done with a drain cable machine: the spiral is fed into the pipe through an opening and, by turning, breaks up and pulls out the blockage. In the price list machine clearing has lines by pipe diameter, from 50 to 110 millimetres, and by the depth the cable has to reach, up to 20 metres.

When an overflow is an emergency

Waste water coming back through the WC pan, a floor drain or the bath cannot wait for working hours: it spreads across the floor, gets under the tiles and into the flat below. That is why a sewage overflow is an emergency, with a call-out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, charged by the separate line in the price list for the emergency call-out. Slow draining that has gone on for days is not an emergency and is booked within working hours, Monday to Saturday from 08 to 16. Still, it should not be put off for long, because a partial blockage usually closes up completely over time.