“Fats, Oils, and Grease,” Dai explained. “When you pour bacon fat down the sink or rinse a pan with oil, it’s liquid when hot. But as soon as it hits the cold pipe under your kitchen, it solidifies. Over months, it builds up like concrete. It catches food scraps, coffee grounds, and eventually, you get this.”
Dai’s team arrived with a “call out” marked urgent. Using a powerful vacuum truck (a "hydro-vac"), they sucked the standing sewage away. Then came the CCTV camera. Deep underground, in a section of pipe laid in the 1920s, a section of the brickwork had collapsed, creating a dam of rubble and sludge. blocked drains telford
“Clay pipes are like a magnet for tree roots,” Dai said. “The joints shrink over time, leaving a tiny gap. A root finds that gap, follows the moisture and oxygen into the pipe, and then it branches out. You can jet them out, but they grow back. The real fix is a structural repair—either a patch liner or digging up the old pipe and replacing it with modern plastic.” “Fats, Oils, and Grease,” Dai explained