Blocked Drains Double Bay

Down goes the camera, out comes the blockage, then we prove the fix before packing up. That's the order it happens in, job after job, across the village.

Getting to that outcome quickly starts with knowing what's underground here. Double Bay is dominated by flats and apartments, around 77% of dwellings, with a layer of pre-1940 heritage homes, Art Deco buildings and Victorian semis tucked in behind the retail strip.

Streets like Knox Street and Cross Street sit on ground that falls steeply toward the harbour, and that fall means drains run across steep grades where debris collects and blocks.

Heavy rain on those slopes concentrates fast, and stormwater lines built decades ago for a quieter village can surcharge under today's downpours.

Behind the Art Deco facades and the mid-century blocks, a lot of the original plumbing has simply never been touched since the day it went in.

A blockage here is rarely one simple thing. It's often gradient and volume working together on an older line, which is exactly why CCTV drain inspection comes before blocked drain repair on almost every job in the village.

Renovations behind the retail strip and around Steyne Park regularly turn up old fittings tied into drainage nobody's mapped properly for decades, which is exactly why we check with the camera before touching anything.

With flats and apartments making up around 77% of homes here, a shared drainage line is more often the reality than a single line to one house.

A fault on a shared stack doesn't automatically belong to one owner, and working out whose problem it is can drag on while a body corporate sorts through the details.

Pushing a lens down the shared section tells the committee exactly where the fault starts, which settles the cost question before any repair is booked.

That answer matters as much to a small block behind Cross Street as it does to a larger one closer to the water.

A body corporate that gets a clear diagnosis upfront generally moves faster on the repair, since there's no back-and-forth left over who's paying for what.

This stretch of the village is a genuine dining and retail strip, with cafes and boutiques trading behind the same drains that serve the homes nearby.

The InterContinental on Cross Street runs a much bigger kitchen again, and a hotel this size puts a steady daily load through the same ageing network.

A commercial kitchen sends more fats and food waste into a shared line than an average household ever would.

Left unchecked, that build-up narrows a line gradually until a normal wash-down is enough to bring on a full stoppage, usually at the worst possible time for a trading kitchen.

Scheduling a clean outside trading hours keeps a kitchen open through service instead of shutting the taps mid-shift.

1. Step one is always the camera. It shows the fault on screen instead of leaving it to guesswork.
2. Step two clears the line. An electric eel or high-pressure jet, matched to what's actually blocking it.
3. Step three fixes what's failed. A weakened or root-affected section rebuilt, not just pushed through.
4. Step four proves the fix holds. A final camera pass, guaranteed for life.