Drain unblocking in Lisbon, 24 hours

When a blockage stops being something you can leave

There is a real difference between a sink that drains slowly and a drain that pushes water back into the house. The first can wait until tomorrow. The second cannot, because the water has nowhere to go and will find the lowest outlet in the system, usually the ground floor shower or the garage drain.

Three symptoms tell us the blockage is serious. Water rises in one place when you drain another. You hear gurgling in the toilet when the washing machine empties. A drain smell appears suddenly in several rooms at once. When any of those show up, the problem is rarely in the appliance. It is in the riser or the chamber.

How we approach drain unblocking

We start by working out how far the blockage reaches. If only one appliance is affected, the job is local, done at the trap or the branch, and usually finished in under an hour. If several appliances fail at once, or neighbours have the same symptom, the blockage is in the shared stack and we go in through the drain chamber instead.

We use drain augers to break through and pull the blockage out, high pressure jetting to wash the inside wall of the pipe, and vacuum equipment to empty full chambers. Our machines are Rothenberger and REMS, which is what lets us work inside narrow pipework without opening walls.

What we unblock most often

• Toilets, bidets, showers and baths
• Kitchen sinks and washing machine drains
• Garage, patio and terrace floor drains
• Shared building risers and branch drains
• Drain chambers and septic tanks, with vacuum clearing

Why it blocks again

A rushed job punches a hole through the middle of the blockage. Water flows that day, the customer is happy, and three weeks later it is back. We wash the whole section so the pipe recovers the working diameter it had originally. It costs a little more time on site and it is the difference between fixing and postponing.

In kitchens the cause is nearly always cooled fat stuck to the pipe wall. In bathrooms it is hair plus soap residue. In older buildings the pipe itself is often the problem, with scale narrowing it from the inside, and in that case clearing it is only temporary relief. We tell you plainly when that is the situation.

What it costs

We do not publish a fixed price list because it would be misleading. The amount depends on where the blockage is, what machine is needed, the access and whether the work is inside or outside normal hours. What we guarantee is the order: we look first, then we tell you the price, and only then we start. No work begins without an agreed figure.