Blocked Sink Coventry — Kitchen & Bathroom Drain Clearing

Kitchen Sinks: FOG Blockages

Fats, oils and grease — commonly referred to as FOG — are behind most kitchen drain problems. Even small amounts of cooking fat poured down a sink solidify as they cool, coating the inside of the waste pipe and progressively narrowing the bore. Over weeks and months, what starts as slow drainage becomes a full blockage.

Rodding alone often moves the blockage further down the pipe rather than removing it. For a FOG blockage, high-pressure jetting is the appropriate method: it strips the grease off the pipe walls completely and flushes it away, rather than pushing a channel through a soft mass that will reaccumulate around the edges.

Bathroom Sinks: Hair, Soap and Scale

Bathroom sink blockages follow a reliable pattern: hair is caught by the pop-up plug mechanism and the trap; soap scum binds it into a dense mat; and in hard water areas like Coventry, dissolved calcium and magnesium minerals deposit a mineral scale coating over the entire mass. The combination can set solid in the narrow 32mm waste pipes that are standard in bathroom basins.

We clear the trap mechanically first, then jet the pipe to remove the full deposit including the scale lining that makes hair catch more readily over time. Simply pulling hair from the trap and leaving the scale-coated pipe walls in place means the next blockage will form faster. See also our blocked bath and shower clearing service, where the same Coventry hard water factor applies.

When the Problem Is Further Down the Line

If clearing the trap and the accessible section of pipe doesn't fully restore flow, the blockage may be in the branch pipe behind the wall or in the main drain run. This is more common in the older terraced and semi-detached housing in Earlsdon, Foleshill and Hillfields, where 100-year-old clay branch pipes may have accumulated decades of scale and organic build-up. We work down the system — trap, branch, main drain — until flow is fully restored.

For recurring blockages in the same property, a full drain inspection is worth considering to identify whether there's a structural reason the pipe keeps blocking.

Prevention

Kitchen sinks: use a sink strainer to catch food solids; dispose of cooking fat in a container to the bin rather than down the drain; even small amounts of oil add up over time. For commercial kitchens or busy HMO properties, periodic maintenance jetting of kitchen drain runs is the most cost-effective way to prevent emergency blockages.

Bathroom sinks: a simple mesh strainer over the drain catches hair before it enters the trap; rinsing the basin with hot water after shaving or washing hair helps flush residue through. In Coventry's hard water, a monthly drain-cleaning treatment can slow scale build-up.