Blog

Blocked drains and septic tank problems can be more than just a nuisance—they can pose serious health risks and lead to costly repairs if not addressed promptly. This guide offers practical advice for homeowners on how to handle blocked drains and when to consider services like "septic tank emptying near me" for optimal maintenance.

In the intricate network of drainage systems, ensuring the integrity and functionality of pipes is paramount. Pressure testing emerges as a critical tool in the arsenal of drainage professionals, allowing for precise diagnostics and quality assurance.

As the festive season approaches, We here at Countywide Drains urge Irish households to take preventive measures against the menace of blocked drains. By implementing these practical tips, you can ensure a hassle-free holiday season and avoid the need for a Drainage CCTV Survey.

Welcome to the world of Countywide Drains, where we, as a dedicated team, redefine the landscape of pipe relining. In this blog post, join us on a journey through the intricacies of our pipe relining services—a seamless solution for addressing the challenges of damaged pipes with innovation, expertise, and a commitment to lasting results.

Welcome to Countywide Drains, where we pride ourselves on being the go-to experts for drain cleaning in Cork. A blocked drain can be a major inconvenience, disrupting your daily routine and posing potential risks to your property. Join us as we delve into the importance of professional drain cleaning and why Countywide Drains is the trusted name in keeping the flow smooth and unobstructed.

Blocked drains can occur due to various reasons. Some of the most common causes include the buildup of hair, soap scum, grease, food particles, and foreign objects in the pipes.

Are you looking at drain CCTV services within your property? Do you need help determining what drain CCTV services are? Or how they can benefit you? Our Countywide Drains Ltd team has compiled all the information you need to know about drain CCTV services and why you need them within your property!

Countrywide drains Ltd. remains one of Ireland's most experienced drain cleaning companies. We have assisted domestic and commercial clients with everything from overflows to pipe blockages.

For homeowners with a septic tank on their property, ensuring that you regularly check and service your tank is a known method of keeping your wastewater treatment system working effectively. That being said, however, it’s also important to install high-quality accessories and parts to keep your tank working safely and efficiently all year round. By investing in regular servicing along with installing a range of septic tank accessories to aid the functionality of your tank, you can save time, money, and stress in the long run by safeguarding your septic tank system against faults. Here, the Countywide Drains team will discuss the best septic tank accessories to invest in for any home or business.

Air Blowers

A septic tank air blower is a vital component in any septic tank system, aerating the environment inside the tank to encourage biological breakdown. The very nature of septic tanks means that aerators, or air blowers, are required to ensure that the septic tank works to break down biological waste. These blowers are suitable for both aerobic septic tanks and bio-treatment units. By installing a high-quality air blower in your septic tank, you not only ensure the efficiency and longevity of your tank, but also the safety of your wastewater treatment system. By ensuring biological breakdown, you can avoid any dangerous septic tank blockages or overflows that could damage your health or property.

Septic Tank Pumps

Similar to an air blower, a septic tank pump is vital to ensure the safety and effective running of your home wastewater treatment system. A septic tank pump is installed to control floats and alert a high water alarm should the tank malfunction. The main purpose of installing a septic tank pump is to disperse the tank waste when the site has a high water level or drainage is compromised. Like an air blower, installing a septic tank pump ensures that your septic tanks runs smoothly and safely without damaging your health, land, or property.

Septic Tank & Drain Specialist

Perhaps we’re biased, but one of the best accessories you can invest in for your home septic tank system is a knowledgeable and experienced septic tank and drain specialist who is on call should an emergency occur. Here at Countywide Drains, we offer a range of septic tank services including septic tank cleaning, drain unblocking, bio-treatment unit inspections, septic tank servicing, CCTV drain inspections, and more. Due to the dangerous nature of septic tanks, ensuring that you have a professional to help should anything go wrong is an absolute must, and our team is always happy to help.

Realising that a drain in your home’s wastewater treatment system is blocked is every homeowner’s worst nightmare. Not only does this disrupt the overall functionality of water systems in the home, but it can also damage your home, pose dangerous health risks for your family, and emit nasty odours and raw sewage if left untreated. If you suspect that a drain or drains in your home are blocked, here are some tips on how to identify this and resolve the issue efficiently and effectively.

Identify What Drain is Blocked

Identifying that you are dealing with a blocked drain in your property is the first step toward fixing the issue. Thankfully, doing this is quite simple. Most homeowners will know a drain is blocked when water stops draining properly from sinks and showers, or when the toilet fails to drain after flushing. Other tell-tale signs of a blocked drain include gurgling or slow draining from sinks, flooding inside or outside the property and, in the worst cases, can be identified by foul odours or raw sewage inside or outside the property. While it’s always easy to know when a drain is blocked, identifying the exact drain or drains that need attention can be difficult. Sometimes blocked drains can be localised and identified by the exact appliance that isn’t draining, but other times it can help to hire a plumber who can use specialised equipment to identify the blocked drain.

Get to Work Unblocking the Drain

After identifying where the blockage lies, the next step is to find out whether the blockage is minor or serious. Many minor blockages, such as small clogs in sink drains and the likes, can be unblocked using standard drain cleaners applied directly down the blocked drain and left to work for a few hours. If this does not work to solve the blockage, it’s important to call a professional plumber to unblock your drains. By hiring a professional, you not only ensure that the blockage is removed in full, but also ensure that the drains in your property are protected and cared for properly, saving you money on expensive structural repairs in the long run.

Hiring a Drain Unblocking Specialist

When it comes to hiring a professional to unblock the drains in your property, ensuring you contact a reliable company is a must to make sure your home’s wastewater system remains intact and working optimally after your drain unblocking service. Professional drain unblocking companies will use high-quality materials such as CCTV videos and specialist poles, rods, and suction hoses to safely but effectively remove any blockages and carry out any drain cleaning services required. While hiring a professional can seem expensive at the time, investing in a service to fully unblock, clean, and repair drains where necessary is always a better idea than trying to unblock a major pipe by yourself and accidentally damaging the entire wastewater treatment system in your home.

Realising that a drain on your property is blocked is every homeowner’s worst nightmare. Characterised by a disgusting smell, outdoor flooding, sinks that won’t drain, and toilets that won’t flush, having a blocked drain on your property is massively frustrating and stressful, inhibiting a number of other systems in your home. While unblocking a clogged drain can be quick and easy with the help of a professional, prevention is always better than cure! Here, the team at Countywide Drains in Cork & Limerick will explain the best ways to safeguard your drains against blockages to ensure that your home remains safe, clean, and functional all year round.

Invest in Strainers for Sinks & Showers

Despite being extremely cheap, small, and easy to find in any discount store or hardware shop, sink strainers are one of the best things you can spend your money on when it comes to preventing drain blockages. Usually made of metal or mesh, sink strainers are small devices that are placed over plugholes in kitchen and bathroom sinks to collect food waste, hairs, cosmetic waste, and more. By collecting these small particles of food and personal waste items before they are flushed down the drain, you can prevent build-ups of matter that will, over time, mould together to form drain blockages. As well as helping to prevent blocked drains, sink strainers make it easier to remove debris from sinks and showers and dispose of them properly to keep your home looking and feeling cleaner.

Be Careful What You Flush Down the Toilet

Despite the warnings on labels and television advertisements, many people still dispose of items such as wet wipes and cotton pads down their toilet. Unlike toilet paper, which is made to biodegrade safely in your wastewater treatment system, wet wipes, make-up removing pads, and other sanitary items are not designed to biodegrade at the same speed, if at all. This, in turn, can cause a build-up of items that block the drain and wreak havoc on your wastewater treatment system. From septic tanks to public wastewater treatment systems, non-toilet safe items are one of the worst culprits of blocked drains across the country and have caused massive damage to drains, land, and properties across Ireland.

Invest in Regular Cleaning Services

Despite homeowners’ best efforts to prevent blocked drains, over time totally preventing any build-up of sludge and waste can be unavoidable. If your home has a private wastewater treatment system such as a septic tank, it can be beneficial to invest in regular cleaning and desludging services to ensure your system is working optimally and preventing future blockages or malfunctions. Countywide4 drains offers professional Limerick & Cork drain cleaning services for a range of properties, providing CCTV drain inspections, full sludge removal, and general drain cleaning to keep your wastewater treatment system working optimally. As well as being an excellent way of ensuring the longevity of your system, hiring annual septic tank cleaning services works out a lot cheaper in the long-run than drain unblocking and repair services.

When it Doubt, Hire the Professionals

So, you’ve tried your best to prevent blocked drains but somehow, it’s still happened. Fear not! Despite our best efforts, sometimes things out of our control such as heavy rain, drain malfunctions, and other households using the same wastewater treatment system can cause blocked drains in our home. When this happens, it’s important to hire a professional drain unblocking service to ensure safe and thorough drain unblocking services for your property. Countywide Drains offers professional Limerick & Cork drain unblocking services designed to keep your wastewater treatment system functioning properly all year round. With great prices and quick call-out times guaranteed, you can trust the team to do a great job on any drain issues you may be experiencing.

If a pipe system has become deteriorated, then a renovation/re-lining service is required to ensure the pipelines can continue to operate without disruption. In cases where pipe re-lining is required, we at Countywide Drains use a cured in place pipe lining solution as this is one of the most efficient and cost effective methods of re-lining a pipeline.

Overview

During this process, a resin saturated lining tube is installed in a pipeline using a polyurethane coated felt tube. Air or water is to install the liner inside the old pipe, after which it is allowed to cure. As a lining solution, CIPP is appropriate for systems such as underground, larger diameter drain and sewer lines. CIPP eliminates the need for excavations.
If you are experiencing issues with deteriorated pipelines, you may benefit from a Cured-In-Place Pipe re-lining service. Contact us today to discuss your requirements.

Accurately diagnosing drainage issues can be a difficult undertaking, as your drainage system is, understandably, not easy to delve into. Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, you do not need to dig up your property to see into your drains and identify an issue. We at Countywide Drain Services are specialists in performing CCTV drain inspections, using sophisticated cameras to assess a drainage system. Here are just some of the main benefits to our CCTV drain inspection service.

Quick Diagnosis

Our CCTV drain inspection service is extremely efficienct and produces quick results. This is crucial, as the longer it takes to remedy the drain issue, the more damage it can cause. Once we have identified the problem, we can then work quickly to find a suitable solution and restore your drains to optimum condition.

Accurate Results

Using our CCTV system, we can display in real-time the inner workings of your drain system. Using this, we are able to accurately identify which sections are not working correctly.

Cost Effective

A CCTV drain inspection is the most cost effective way to diagnose issues with your drainage system, with the main alternative being an excavation which will require a lot more work.
If you need a CCTV inspection for your drainage system, give us a call.

Countywide Drain Services Ltd

A well maintained septic tank is vital to properly managing the waste of your household or business, which is why it is vital you empty it on time and don’t allow it to overflow. Here we have compiled some of the common warning signs that indicate your septic tank may be full.

Areas of Pooling Water
One of the most common symptoms of an overflowing septic tank is areas of water pooling in or around the drain field of your septic tank system. Once the tank has reached its capacity, waste can begin to clog the system, which forces liquid to the surface.

Slow Moving Drains
Although slow moving drains can simply mean you have a clog, it is also a symptom of your septic tank system being full. If traditional unclogging measures don’t seem to be working, your best bet is to request a septic tank cleaning service.

Foul Odours
Your septic tank system accumulates not only waste but also the grey water which comes from showering, washing dishes, etc. This combination creates a foul smelling odour, which usually will be contained. However, if your septic tank system is overflowing, then this foul odour can permeate into your property.

Overly Green Grass
The grass around your septic tank should look the same as the rest of the grass in your garden. Overly green or lush grass surrounding a septic tank can indicate leakage, meaning you need either a septic tank cleaning or repair service.

Sewage Backup
Sewage backup is one of the surest signs your septic tank has reached capacity and needs to be cleaned as soon as possible.

If you notice any of these issues, be sure to give us a call on 021 733 4550 to schedule a septic tank cleaning service.