On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 21:48:23 +0000, guv wrote:

Its just come to my attention that I have a drain problem at the front
of my house.

The liquid stuff you chuck down these waste pipes is generally not
very good at shifting a blockage in my experience. I offer the
following advice only to add to the general advice, you probably
wouldn't want to rush out and buy everything from scratch.

An excellent way of dealing with deposits which build up over a period
of time (this does sound like the problem you are faced with) is to
use a pressure washer with a drain cleaning accessory. You can push
that drain cleaning hose into the waste pipe to where the blockage is
(the blockage is likely to be some sort of fatty deposit I would
think), and the high water pressure will blast it away.

However, a real downside for you here is that the pressure washer is
likely to backflow into the garage, so you need to be inventive about
sealing that gap so that any additional pressure forces the pressure
down towards the public sewer and away from the house. You might be
able to stuff some rags around the high pressure hose after you have
fed it into the waste pipe. You would need to keep your eye on this
whilst the pressure is on because a high pressure washer does what it
says on the box - it creates a lot of pressure which has to go
somewhere.

I had one job not entirely dissimilar to this last year. Problem was
that the customers external drain was overflowing into her car parking
area because the underground pipes had several years worth of leaves
blocking it up. Quick trip to Focus DIY to buy the pressure washer and
drain cleaning kit and that problem was resolved quickly.

Pressure washers are handy for cleaning patios too

Andrew