Blocked Drains Nambour

A clay-pipe town, explained

Blocked Drains in Nambour: Why This Town Gets More Than Its Share

First, most Nambour homeowners discover something of real worth, as it redefines the entire dilemma: your drains are quite likely older than you realise, and they're constructed of a material roots favour!

Nambour is the Sunshine Coast hinterland's original town. The North Coast railway arrived in 1891, the Moreton Central Sugar Mill was operating in 1897, and the town's development around the sugar mill continued for a hundred years, with working cottages, timber Queenslanders, a commercial main street and decades of residential growth, roughly doubling the population between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Long before the beachfront suburbs were much more than sand tracks, Nambour had streets, houses and pipes in the ground.

Those pipes matter. In Australia for much of the last century, sewer pipes were installed in earthenware clay, a tough, inert substance, though in short lengths which join together with a joint about every metre. All the joints were encased in mortar or a rubber ring and all of the joints are a weak point. By the time a pipe is 60 or 80 years old, a fair level of ground movement has taken place on true hilly country at the foot of the Blackall Range, and a good share of the joints on the pipe itself will have cracked, shifted or separated by several millimetres.

A root only requires a fraction of a millimetre.

This is because Nambour is in the higher blockage list of all the Sunshine Coast, Noosa and Moreton Bay suburbs of the Unitywater network, appearing in the utility's ten worst suburbs alongside Buderim, Maroochydore and Tewantin, with tree roots being the largest single cause of blockage, accounting for about 1 in 5 wastewater blockages where the cause was confirmed. Keep in mind that these are only the public network numbers. Each time a blockage is cleared in a private boundary, by plumbers like us, it sits on top of that number.

We have cleared blocked drains in the town centre, older residential streets, Coes Creek, Burnside, Image Flat, out to the range and more at Nambour and the surrounding hinterland and finished each job the same way: using a CCTV camera down the line, so you'll see where the roots are going in rather than paying to have the same job done again next winter.

How a Root Actually Gets Into a Sewer

It's important to understand the mechanism, because it explains the lack of success of clearing alone, and gives a reason why the successful fix is the one people initially don't want to pay for.

A sewer pipe moves the warm, nutrient laden water, for a tree, the most appealing resource in your yard, especially during the dry Queensland winter. If a joint is opened, even minimally, water vapour seeps into the surrounding soil. Roots sense that water gradient and move towards it. A root filament thinner than fishing line works its way through the gap, reaches the water and then does what roots do when they find good water and nutrition, it thickens and branches and thrives.

In a season or two that one filament grows into a fibrous mat that stretches across the pipe, and a root mat is a very good catcher of everything a household flushes. Paper, hair, grease, and some wipes. The mat is a dam, the dam is a blockage and the blockage tells you it is there when the water rises in your shower recess at the least opportune time.

This is the essential part. The plumber cuts that mat away with a jetter or an eel and the drain flows freely again, job done, right? The point of entry remains, the tree is still thirsty, and the roots react to being severed as a hedge would react: they grow back thicker. That is why so many Nambour homes have a drain, which they clean every 12 or 18 months, and just take for granted. It's not bad fortune and it's not a bad job. It's a hole in a pipe that never has been closed.

What Else Blocks Nambour's Drains

Roots are the dominant cause, but not the only one, and what is done about the cause will vary greatly.

Fats, oils and grease

Fat from cooking runs down kitchen sinks as a hot liquid, and forms a solid similar to candle wax on the pipe walls of the sink. The effective diameter decreases layer by layer until a slug of food scraps completes the process. Greasiness is a problem on a root-affected pipe, as the grease attaches to the root mat and makes the entire situation a whole lot worse, and easier to turn from an obstruction to a complete blockage.

Wet wipes and other unflushables

About 30 seconds after being placed in water, toilet paper is engineered to break apart. Whereas wet wipes are designed to be strong, many will not break down at all, whatever the packaging says! They flush beautifully, but then get stuck at the first root, rough joint or bend and remain there forever. Now add sanitary products, cotton buds and paper towel and you have the second big category. A clay-pipe town has joints at every metre, so there's a lot of places for these things to get caught.

Ground movement and structural failure

The land in Nambour is quite hilly, so hilly that cane was still being cut by hand into the 1970s because mechanical harvesters were not capable of working on these hills. Decades of slope change cause ground to slant, settle, and creep away and rigid clay pipe can't bend with the movement of the ground. The results appear on camera as burst pipes, cracked sections and joints shifted side to side, dropped out of alignment and in some cases a partial collapse. A sagged section yields a belly, a dip holding standing water where blockages form repeatedly in the same location, even when the household takes extra care.

Storm debris and stormwater surcharge

Nambour gets its water from overhead. Ranges and the upper slopes are affected by heavy rain which flows through the town; stormwater lines that handle ordinary weather well are unable to manage heavy rainfall and velocities from hilly catchments. Throw in all of the extra leaves from a well established garden for the summer, and a stormwater system that operates at 80% through winter is killed in the first big cell. Low-lying areas near Petrie Creek are the first to be affected as it has flooded in this town for over a century.

Sediment and grit on tank-water properties

Then there are properties on the acreage fringes running rainwater tanks that impose different stresses on the drain, and those on septic or aerated treatment systems, instead of mains sewer, with completely different failure modes, such as surfacing effluent, alarms, and systems that cease to function properly.

The Warning Signs, Learn Them, This Town Rewards It

• Gurgle noise from the toilet or plughole when other fixtures drain. Air going around or over a partial obstruction, this is the first reliable sign you'll see, and in Nambour it most commonly indicates that a root mat is developing.
• Two or more fixtures that are slow. Several lazy sinks indicate the problem in the main line.
• Toilet water levels. If the water in the toilet is significantly above or below normal or if it bubbles after flushing.
• Sewage smells. In the yard, bathroom or laundry, which are recurring and periodic.
• A stripe of unusually green lawn. A patch of grass that is unusually rich and green compared with the rest, or a strip that is damp where it shouldn't be, when everything else is dry. It's a broken pipe that is fertilising and watering your garden, and this is a Nambour classic!
• Overflow gully weeping during periods of dry weather.
• Blockages that repeat on a rough schedule, especially during the late winter and spring when trees are most in need of water.

Caught at the gurgling stage, this is a simple same day clearing job. Ignored, eventually wastes get pushed up into the lowest drain in the house, a real health risk and plumbing crisis, and a particularly unwelcome one in the many Nambour homes with only one bathroom.

How We Clear Nambour Drains, and Keep Them Clear

1. Evaluate and scan first. Sewer or stormwater? What line and where are the access points? On older properties, it is not always the case that the inspection openings are in the same position as in the plans, and reading the site correctly before anything goes down the pipe means the right tool goes in first.
2. Properly cut out the blockage. The high pressure water jetter is the workhorse: uses water at several thousand psi, purpose-made nozzles that cut into root masses, and cleans the pipe wall back to its natural original size, removing set grease. In a root town, cutting power really does matter; a half-cleared root mat grows back fastest of all, and a hole punched in a blockage restores flow for weeks, not years. There are some internal lines where the electric drain cleaning machine with cutting heads is more useful.
3. Camera the line, no exceptions. The only question that ends the cycle is, “Where are the roots making inroads into the pipe?”, and the answer comes from a CCTV drain camera which will travel along the cleared pipe and record footage. Skipping this step in Nambour is how a household ends up on the annual clearing subscription. You view it with us on the screen.
4. Leak detection, pinpoint every defect. A surface locator maps the camera head above the ground, indicating the location and depth of each root entry, crack or belly to the centimetre. That precision is the difference between a targeted repair and a landscaping catastrophe under mature gardens, established trees, old driveways and sloping blocks.
5. Quote the real options. If there is only one blockage, sound pipe, you're finished, footage included. Root entry or structural damage detected: the real choices priced side by side, periodic maintenance clearing, sectional patching, relining or excavation if none are viable. Your pipe, your budget, your call and no railroading!

Ending the Annual Blockage: The Permanent Fixes

Pipe relining, the answer for old Nambour

Relining involves pulling a resin-treated liner into the damaged pipe and hardening it in place to create a smooth, seamless, new pipe within an old pipe. All cracks and joints are sealed at the same time, including every root doorway along the relined section. There's nothing else for a root to go into and quality liners usually come with warranties of 10 years or more.

The technology isn't experimental. In the past two years, Unitywater has been relining its own network at scale with approximately 25 kilometres of wastewater pipe relining completed around the Sunshine Coast and Noosa. What's good enough for your utility's mains works very well for the clay line in your Coes Creek garden.

For Nambour the no-dig element is close to the game-winner. A town of well-established gardens and old trees people love, old concrete driveways, sloping blocks, and often a sewer line under something that will either be too costly or not possible to rebuild. Digging a trench to pass through 50 years of garden, on a slope, around tree roots you are trying to leave alone, is a serious matter. Relining avoids all of it, usually in one day, and the tree remains.

One honest caveat, and it's worth noting: a liner conforms to the shape of the host pipe. It will fill in a broken or root-invaded line in a wonderful way, but will have no effect on a badly sagged section that needs to be lifted up. If a section on a slope has fallen out of alignment because of ground movement, it may require alignment instead of lining. The camera will tell us what your situation is and we tell you straight, not sell a liner into a pipe that can't be fixed by one.

Sectional patch repairs

A patch liner can be used to fix a single problem joint, as opposed to a full reline, at a fraction of the cost. When there's one bad metre on a long run, it's often exactly the right answer and we'll say so rather than quoting the larger job.

Excavation, when honesty demands it

A clay line may be truly collapsed or poorly back graded so as to be incapable of being salvaged by a liner. When the camera indicates that, we tell you quite explicitly, plan the dig to affect as little of the garden as possible, and charge accordingly.

Living With Trees and Keeping Your Drains

There's no one who comes to Nambour for the concrete. The mature gardens and established trees are a big reason why people enjoy these streets, and we do not suggest removing a fifty year old tree to replace a pipe, especially when the neighbouring trees will be able to take the lease within a year.

What actually works:

• Close the pipe, leave the tree! This is the whole idea behind relining. A pipe with no openings will not have any roots. That's the only way you can have both.
• Plant with a map. Before any new plantings are done, check what is underneath. Unitywater maintains a complimentary online mapping application that displays Unitywater infrastructure on any property, and your site plans or a plumber's locate will display private runs. Keep the thirsty species, such as figs, bottlebrushes and paperbarks, towards the edge of the block, away from pipework.
• Know what root-foaming treatments do and what they don't. They can reduce regrowth within the pipe and can be used as a maintenance tool. They do not close the entry hole; they are only a method of coping with the problem.
• Kitchen habits matter more in a root pipe. Wipe pans down before washing; jar cooking oil for the bin; put a sink strainer on. Grease is the accelerant on a root mat.
• Only the three Ps, pee, poo and toilet paper! The term “flushable” on a wipes packet is a marketing term, not a plumbing term.
• Know your overflow relief gully and keep it clear of paving, turf, pots and garden beds.
• Prior to storm season: unclog gutters and surface grates in the spring time, and have a slow moving storm water line jetted in October rather than found in January. On the slope below the range, this is truly important.
• Buying an older Nambour home? The lowest cost pre purchase due diligence you can have done in this town is a pre-purchase CCTV drain inspection. A beautifully renovated bathroom still sits above whatever clay line was laid in 1955, and that line's condition does not show up on a standard building report.

Whose Pipe Is It?

The boundary issue arises with virtually all Nambour sewer projects. The principle is that the private main for private drains is the responsibility of the property owner up to where the private main joins the public main, and Unitywater is responsible for the maintenance of the public main after that.

That's actually useful in two ways. First, Unitywater has a free online mapping tool that allows you to type in an address and it will show you any utility infrastructure that crosses your block, which can be useful before landscaping, and before you assume a fault is yours. Second, camera footage resolves the problem without any opinion, if the problem is in the public main, we'll document the location and hand you what you need to refer it to the utility, rather than you paying to treat a pipe you don't own. In a town where much of the public network is the same age as the private network, this comes up more often than you might expect.