Clearing blocked drains across Dublin since 1968 — day or night.
Skip to content Clearing blocked drains across Dublin since 1968 — day or night.
Most outside blockages sit between two manholes in your own garden. We find which two, clear the run with rods or jetting, and show you the camera footage before we go.
Since 1968
Over 35 years on Dublin drainage
24/7 call-outs
Answered any hour, every day
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All enquiries are reviewed by our team before a consultation is confirmed.
Blocked external drains come in three types. Tell us which and we arrive ready.
The kitchen waste pipe empties into a gully outside. Fat builds there first. Jetting clears it.
One pipe carries the whole house to the sewer. Block it and every toilet and sink stops together. We open the manhole and work from there.
Surface water drains take leaves, moss and grit all winter until they stop taking water. Usually a quick clear.
Six causes account for nearly every outside drain we clear. Yours is on this list.
Leaves and silt filling the gully
Gullies fill from the bottom up. The grate on top still looks clear while the pot underneath has gone solid with leaf mulch and grit.
Roots growing in through the joints
Older Dublin gardens sit on clay pipe with open joints. Roots grow through towards the water, then root cutting and jetting take them back out.
Fat and grease from the kitchen
Fat leaves the sink as a liquid and sets as a solid in the cold pipe outside. High pressure jetting cuts it off the pipe walls.
Drains overwhelmed by heavy rain
Heavy rain does not block a drain on its own. It shifts debris that was already sitting there into the narrowest part of the run.
A broken pipe under the garden
If the same drain blocks twice in a year, the pipe is usually the reason. A CCTV drain survey shows the break and how far down it sits.
Waste backing up from further down the line
If your drain floods when you have not used anything, the blockage is downstream and probably shared. We trace it and tell you whose side it sits on.
Outside work starts at the manhole, which is the part that separates it from drain unblocking inside the house.
A full chamber and a dry one either side puts the blockage between them. That is half the job done standing still.
Most blockages come out on rods. Fat, silt and roots need jetting, which scours the pipe rather than punching a hole through.
Clearing a drain tells you it was blocked. The camera tells you why, which is what stops it happening again in March.
You see the footage on screen. Sound pipe, we say so. Problem pipe, you get a price before anything else happens.
Three things move the price: how deep the run sits, how far along the blockage is, and whether rods will shift it.
Outside drains vary too much to price over the phone. We quote on site once we can see which chambers are affected.
This is an estimate. We quote the actual price after seeing the job.
The eight we hear most on outside drain calls.
Unblocking an outside drain in Dublin typically costs between €120 and €300, depending on depth, distance and whether the blockage shifts on rods or needs jetting. A shallow gully at the front of the house sits at the lower end. A deep run needing jetting sits at the top. We quote on site before anything starts.
An outside drain that blocks more than once a year almost always has something wrong with the pipe itself, not with what is going down it. Roots through a joint, a cracked section, or a length that has dropped and holds water. Clearing moves the blockage. A camera finds the reason it keeps coming back.
Drainage inside your property boundary is yours, and so is the pipe connecting it to the public sewer. Uisce Éireann is responsible for the public sewer network itself. Where a drain serves several houses before reaching the sewer, every property feeding into it shares responsibility for a blockage. Reading the manholes shows which side of the boundary yours sits on.
Stop using water inside the house first. Every flush and every tap adds to what is already backing up. Keep children and pets away from the overflow, and leave the cover where it is, because a lifted cover in a wet garden is a genuine hazard. Then ring a drainage company.
Heavy rain rarely blocks a drain on its own. It moves debris that was already sitting in the gully or the run into the narrowest point, where it jams. If your drain floods after every heavy shower rather than once in a storm, something was already partly blocking it.
Clearing leaves and silt out of a gully pot with a gloved hand is reasonable and often enough for a surface water drain. Lifting a manhole and rodding the main run is not. Rods can push a blockage further down, crack an old joint, or open a chamber you cannot close safely. If clearing the gully does not fix it, the blockage is further along.
If the blockage sits in a drain shared by several houses, every household on that line shares responsibility for clearing it, regardless of whose waste caused it. If it sits in your neighbour’s own private drain, it is theirs alone. If it sits in the public sewer, Uisce Éireann handles it. A camera survey is what settles the argument, because it shows exactly where the blockage is.
Most outside drains are cleared within an hour of the crew arriving. Surface water gullies are usually quicker. Deep runs, long distances and anything needing jetting take longer, and a blockage caused by a broken pipe will need a survey before it can be properly sorted. We tell you what to expect when we quote.
Tell us what you are seeing and where you are. Price back to you the same day.
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