While a blocked drain may seem like a minor plumbing problem in your home, if allowed to fester, things can deteriorate quite quickly, leaving you with a foul mess and even fouler mood.

To save time and money down the line it’s best to address your blocked drains the moment you notice them. If things worsen or the problem keeps recurring, you’ll need to have a good look at the cause, so you can keep your drains clear, for good.

Ten common reasons for blocked drains

In most cases the objects that lead to a drain becoming blocked are easy to avoid, so saying, there is a big difference between ‘foreseeable’ blockages and avoidable ones. For example, you had no reason to suspect that your toddler would throw the oil diffuser into the toilet bowl and flush it.

The same goes for ‘flushable’ wipes you buy at the supermarket, these are drain blockers and should never be flushed. Once you know this it’s easy to avoid, however, going by the packaging, it seems safe enough to flush away, and since the blockage can take time (and layers and layers of wipes) to be detected, you might not associate your pipe issues with the wipes at all.

Some of the most common reasons for blocked drains are:

#1 Foreign Objects

Children’s toys and household objects placed in the toilet by kids is a pretty big contributor to toilet blockages.

#2 Toiletries

Another common toilet drain callout is for non-flushable hygiene products like nappies, pads, tampons and wet wipes.

#3 Food Scraps

Even small pieces of food can cause blocks over time or create a grimy, sticky wall of filth that lines the pipe walls and closes the pipe in.

#4 Cooking oil

As well as reacting poorly with water, cooking oil is thick and sticky, making it your kitchen drain’s worst nightmare. Tip your oil into the rubbish, compost or garden rather than down the drain.

#5 Minerals

Town water contains minerals such as calcium. If these build up it can narrow the pipe, which isn’t a blockage issue on its own, but it does increase the likelihood of other materials becoming trapped.

#6 Soap fragments

Liquid soap will safely drain away but soap cakes and fragments of caked soap will take a lot of time to dissolve if it escapes down the drain. A mesh drain cover will allow you to catch soap and hair before it can congeal in a mess beneath your drain grate.

#7 Long Hair

Long hair strands get washed down the drain and it’s very easy for them to become tangled in the drain or against other objects like soap. Once that happens it creates an anchor for more hair to catch on.

#8 Kitty Litter

Kitty litter is designed to expand and clump for easy cleaning of your cat’s tray. This is not the kind of material that you want in your toilet pipes. Always put your cat litter in the rubbish.

#9 Natural Debris

Outside drains can collect debris from nearby trees, including leaves and sticks. Using gutter guards can help keep natural rubbish clear of your drains.

#10 Tree Roots

Tree root damage will affect your main sewage system rather than the individual pipes, however, the damage they cause can be significantly more than interior pipe blockages.

Knowing what the causes are for blocked drains gives you a big advantage in avoiding blockages in the future as well as knowing how to tackle a blocked drain by applying the right solution for your particular drain problem. When hiring a professional ensure anyone who works on your drains is licenced for drainage work.