Blocked drains and stopped pumps
across Mosman

Probably not, if your property is on a pumped system, and the difference matters. A blocked gravity drain degrades. It goes slow, then slower, then backs up, and there is normally days of warning if anyone is paying attention. A pump gives none. It works perfectly right up until it does not, and then every fixture in the house stops together because nothing is lifting the waste anywhere. Sudden and total is the signature of a machine, not an obstruction.

Because the ground would not cooperate with gravity. Sewerage relies on fall, and the low-lying areas around the Balmoral slopes could not gravitate to the outfall sewer at all. So low-level pumping stations were built to collect the waste and push it back uphill through separate sewers called rising mains, into the main gravity system. Chowder Bay's station was commissioned in 1926, serving the Mosman septic tanks at Balmoral Beach before the ocean outfall existed. Greater Sydney now runs more than six hundred of them.

Three things, mostly. A float switch that has stopped sensing the level, so the pump never gets told to run. An impeller jammed or wrapped by something that should not have been flushed. And a non-return valve that has stopped holding, which lets the rising main drain back down every time the pump stops, so it runs constantly and eventually burns out. All three are mechanical and all three are diagnosable in minutes rather than hours.

Considerably, and it is worth knowing. In a gravity system a wipe becomes a blockage, which is unpleasant and a clean-out fixes it. In a pump it wraps the impeller, which is a mechanical failure. That is a different job at a different price, and it is entirely avoidable. If you are on a pumped system, the bin is not a preference, it is the difference between an inconvenience and a repair.

Depends which one. The low-level pumping stations across the network, more than six hundred of them, belong to Sydney Water and are theirs to maintain. A pump inside a private boundary serving one property belongs to the owner, and that is the one we work on. Establishing which you are dealing with is the first thing we do, and if the problem sits on Sydney Water's side you should not be paying us for it.

Yes, and it is one of the few genuine advantages of a pumped system over a buried gravity line. You cannot inspect most of a gravity drain without a camera. A pump is accessible: the float, the non-return valve and the impeller can all be checked, and the things that strand people are exactly the things that give warning if anyone looks.

A standard drain clear through an existing access point is $150 to $400. A camera inspection is $250 to $450. Diagnosing a stopped pump is $180 to $350, and it is usually quick. What a repair costs after that depends entirely on which of the three things has failed, and we give you that figure before doing it.