A blocked bath or shower drain leaves standing water, which makes the fixture unusable. Left alone, it can also cause water damage. Hair mixing with soap scum usually causes bath and shower blockages, forming a thick plug in the trap or waste pipe. Shower trays with shallow traps are especially prone to this, since their narrower pipe clogs more easily. Your engineer uses flexible drain snakes to work around the tight bends in bath waste pipes, along with micro-jetting nozzles sized for bathroom pipes. For shower trays set into the floor, they carry low-profile tools that reach the trap without lifting tiles. They still check the pipe beyond the trap itself, since a second blockage or damaged pipe can also cause slow drainage. The visit typically takes between 30 minutes and one hour, and your engineer takes care to protect bathroom surfaces throughout.
We remove the drain cover or waste fitting to reach the trap, since visible hair and debris can often be removed right away.
A flexible drain snake is fed through the waste pipe to break up and pull out the blockage. For tough clogs, a rotating head removes packed hair and soap deposits, since these need more than a straight rod to shift.
We flush the cleared pipe with water and, where needed, use a micro-jetting nozzle, since that removes any build-up left on the pipe walls.
We fill the bath or run the shower to full capacity, since that confirms the water drains at the right rate with no gurgling left.
The cost of unblocking a bath or shower drain depends on how easy the trap is to reach, and whether the blockage sits further along. Request a fast, fixed-price quote online. Since there's no call-out fee, the price is confirmed before work starts.
Fitting a simple hair catcher over the plughole is the single best way to stop this, since cheap mesh or silicone guards catch hair before it enters the waste pipe. Cleaning the guard after each use and flushing with hot water each week keeps the pipe clear.
Usually, yes, since slow drainage almost always points to a partial blockage forming in the trap or waste pipe. Sometimes the issue is a venting problem instead, since trapped air behind the draining water creates a vacuum that slows the flow. Your engineer checks for both.
If the bath shares a waste pipe with other fixtures, which is common in many Exeter homes, a blockage in that shared section can affect the bath, basin, and sometimes the toilet. Since several slow fixtures at once usually points to the underground drain, that's where your engineer looks first.