Flood Prevention: Avoid a Backyard Moat!

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Updated 2024 by John Salmon. Flood prevention is a hot topic in Brisbane. Summer is our wet season in Queensland and spring is the ideal time to check the external plumbing around your home. No one wants a moat around their house when the storms and rains inevitably hit. Proper backyard drainage is key to preventing water inundation inside your home, but the process starts with your roof!

Here are some checks and maintenance tips you can do around your house to ensure the water flows where it needs to go.

1. Clean your roof and remove debris

The roof is the largest surface area of your home, and it’s the first surface to be hit by rain. Ensure your roof is clean and debris-free so that when the rain does hit, it doesn’t wash accumulated debris through your gutters or downpipes, causing a blockage.

2. Empty gutters of leaf debris

Cleaning your gutters is step one in flood prevention. Crack out the ladder every spring and spend a Saturday making sure there is no leaf litter preventing the water from flowing through each channel to the stormwater drains. Leaf matter can break down and congest downpipes. This can cause a back-up of water when it storms or rains, and this water has nowhere to go except overflow the edges of the gutters, falling around the house often causing an external flood.

3. Inspect rusty gutters and down pipes and ensure correct fall

Every spring, your gutters and down pipes should be inspected for rust and openings which can cause a water to fall through, instead of being directed away from the home through the existing storm water drainage. Have rusty gutters and downpipes replaced as soon as possible to avoid the drama of an external flood during storm season.

Also ask your trusted Brisbane plumber to check for backfall of gutters. The correct fall ensures the water flows towards the downpipes, not away from them.

4. Flood prevention and stormwater grates

Often significant rain events can wash sand and dirt down storm water grates. This needs to be emptied to ensure a free channel of water to flow through when the next rain event hits. Click here to read more about storm water.

5. Ask your plumber to calculate the right number of downpipes for your roof surface area

Some houses just don’t have enough downpipes to meet the capacity of water fall from the surface area of their roof. Moving water from your guttering and is key to flood prevention at home, and usually where the process comes unstuck. If you think this is a problem at your property, call Salmon Plumbing out to investigate and offer a solution. This could be an opportunity to add a rainwater tank or two to be prepared for drought. If you’ve got an ageing rainwater tank, have your plumber inspect it for signs of cracking and decay. Upgrading a rainwater tank isn’t too expensive or difficult.

6. Flood prevention means the correct-sized stormwater pipes underground

Most stormwater pipes underground around houses are 90mm PVC. Often this pipe is not big enough for the amount of water that flows through the down pipes. Upgrading these pipes can help prevent a moat situation around your house during a heavy rain event. Of course, making sure you have no issues with blocked drains is vital too! If you suspect you may have a blockage anywhere in your drainage system, call us out stat. The next big storm could be brewing.

Keeping gardens maintained and away from storm water grates ensures water can flow to where it needs to go when it matters most.

The external plumbing to your home is vitally important to prevent floods around your house. External floods can cause damage inside your house, by seeping through window and door openings. It’s an inconvenience that can be avoided with the right storm water drainage around your home.

Another health concern to be aware of is any type of pooling of water in gutters and around the home can also attract mosquitoes. The pools of water offer mozzies the the perfect spot to breed. This is a health concern as mosquitoes can spread the Zika Virus and Ross River Fever. Ensuring adequate storm water drainage can prevent mozzies making a home at your home. Flood prevention isn’t just about potential damage to your property, it’s about keeping your family safe this storm season.

If you have a storm water blockage or have concerns about how rain water is channeled away from your home, give Salmon Plumbing a call. Our plumbers can offer solutions so you’re better prepared when the wet weather hits this summer.

The Gross Reason for Your Kitchen Sink Blockage

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Water flowing through the kitchen sink

Updated 2024 by John Salmon. When winter rolls around, bring on the hot chips and gravy. Bring on all the carb-rich comfort foods like roasts, soups and casseroles. Anything to keep your belly full and hands warm while embracing all the comforts winter draws us to. Unfortunately, these foods can also cause blocked drains. A kitchen sink blockage caused by congealed fat needs to be dealt with urgently as it will likely trap additional debris and get out of hand fast. It’s not just winter, kitchen sink blockages can happen at any time, but the grossest one? Let’s talk Fatbergs.

Common kitchen sink blockage

Oils and fats rinsed down the kitchen sink drain are notorious for causing kitchen sink blockages. It can happen all year round but in winter, as your pipes are cold, the fats congeal and form solid clumps, or as Queensland Urban Utilities likes to call them Fatbergs. These solid masses of fat will block your drains and grab passing debris to create all kinds of problems, in your kitchen sink, your pipes and eventually in sewers.

How to avoid kitchen sink blockages caused by fatbergs

It’s sacrilege to leave gravy on a plate, but some people are just heathens. If you’ve got oil, fats, or gravy to dispose of, don’t wash them down the sink. Here’s a few good habits to avoid a fatberg kitchen sink blockage:

  1. Allow the fats to cool and solidify then scrape them into the bin.
  2. When rinsing roasting trays or plates with oil slicks or excess sauces and gravy, immediately turn the hot water tap on to ‘flush’ away the oils from the trap.
  3. For extra measure, boil the kettle and pour boiling hot water down the kitchen sink to ensure the breakdown of the fats and oils.
  4. A small squirt of dishwashing liquid down the drain and a full bowl of water drained down the sink will disperse the oils in the pipes, which will prevent blockage.

Oil is just the tip of the Fatberg

Not going to lie, I like saying fatberg. For are we not all fatbergs in winter to some extent? Grease is just one cause of a blocked kitchen sink. And it can just be the start of a much bigger problem. Once a fatberg forms, it can catch other “stuff” causing a bigger problem, fast. What else could be causing a kitchen sink blockage?

  • Soap Scum. A build up of dried soap scum, usually from hand soap can cause kitchen sink blockages. Run hot water down your sink regularly to avoid material drying in the pipes.
  • Food Scraps and Coffee Grounds. Yes, we’ve all been guilty of flushing a few coffee grounds down the sink. It’s hard to make good choices before you’ve had coffee. Fit a “waste trap” in the sink’s drain to catch all those bits and pieces that can cause blockages.
  • Dishwasher and Garbage Disposal Problems. If your dishwasher is draining food matter into the kitchen sink drain, or you’re overlading your garbage disposal, you could be inadvertently causing blockages. Regularly clean your dishwasher, make sure the food trap is in place. Keep your garbage disposal system well maintained and avoid overloading it as it will let larger particles into the drain pipe.
  • Children. Look, it seems a bit mean to say but the number of times we’ve been called out to a kitchen sink blockage caused by…. nerf bullets, Barbie doll parts, those little balls that swell up in water (WHY) – first step in a sudden and unexpected kitchen sink blockage is to ask the little darlings if they’ve been up to no good!
  • Flash flooding or backed up pipes. Sometimes a blockage isn’t a blockage. When your drainage system is overwhelmed from another source, it may appear that your kitchen sink has a blockage when actually there’s just nowhere for the water to go. If you notice a bad smell, gurgling or slow drainage in your kitchen sink, that comes on suddenly, during a weather incident – you may need an emergency plumber.

DIY tricks on clearing your blocked sink

There are a few DIY tricks that can break up a blocked kitchen sink.

  1. Sprinkle bi-carb soda and pour hot vinegar (microwave for 1 minute) down the drain.
  2. Use a household plunger to loosen the blockage
  3. Undo the sink trap and pour the water into the sink with the plugin. Ensure the trap is free of food blockages.
  4. Pour a household drain cleaner down the sink. These are readily available from your local hardware or grocery store. Do try the natural remedies before going down the chemical aisle.

If none of these remedies removes the blockage, it’s time to call your local Brisbane plumber. A drain cleaning machine or an electric eel may need to be used to blast away the kitchen sink blockage. Salmon Plumbing is experienced in types of blockages. Contact the team to get your kitchen sink unblocked today.