Drain Leaks & Blockages Wellington
Drain leaks are like water supply leaks, in drain leaks the water discharges in locations that are often not near the source. The break is often away from where you see the water running.
Often these leaks can travel 100’s of meters from the leaking drain. There is a method for locating them which involves cutting and testing. Putting dye down the drains can help sometimes.
A drain camera will locate tree roots and large breaks, but not slight cracks. In most cases, enormous sections of drain need a replacement. Drain cameras do not fix drains, but they are useful in locating the position of the drain and seeing its condition.
Sewerage can discharge from stormwater drains when they are both broken. Leaking drains are often blocked too.
Drain Unblocking
There are different ways of unblocking drains depending on what is blocking it. For example, sand in a storm; water drains are not removed using a drain-clearing machine. In this case, we use industrial water blaster. The same applies to stiff root infested drains, the machine will take a long time to cut through. In cases like these, industrial water blasters are more successful than machine clearing. Clearing machines are handy for some locations and drains. Wellington is one of the most difficult places in the world to unblock drains due to its hilly topography. Long back sections farther from the road and drains are often over 100 years old. Due to undulating sections, the drains are often deep underground, hard to locate and work on due to keeping walls built over top of them.
In New Zealand, it is not required to bring drain access points to the surface. It means we often have to access drains through bend gully traps making it more difficult. We have a drain camera that will locate pipes deep underground. The camera will take video of the drains up to 50m in length. We can camera more than one section to form a video of the entire length all the way to the Council main. It can see things like breaks and tree roots.
Tree Roots
Often in New Zealand, we grow large trees on our properties. This results in tree root travel along way to find water. For these roots, leaking drains are a good source of moisture. Once the root finds these drains, they wrap themselves around them and even crack to enter the drain. They grow and run down inside these drains. This results in the drain blocks. Cutting these roots from inside is only a temporary solution, as they will keep growing over again. The best and permanent solution is to cut out the bad section of the drain and replace it. We use PVC in drainage today and it does not crack unless it is heavily stressed.
Contact us on 0800 484 353 for further information.