Drain Unblocking Eindhoven

Drain unblocking in Eindhoven: what the sandy soil has to do with it

Eindhoven sits on the sandy soils of Brabant. That's good news for stability: pipes here subside far less than in the peat meadows of Holland further west. Still, sand has drawbacks of its own. In a dry summer, the water quickly drains out of the topsoil and tree roots go looking for moisture. A sewer pipe with a leaking joint is then an obvious target. That's why so many stubborn blocked drains in Eindhoven turn out to be caused by root intrusion.

Then there's the city's history. Eindhoven grew rapidly in the twentieth century, with Philips as its driving force. In 1920, the surrounding villages of Woensel, Strijp, Stratum, Gestel and Tongelre were merged into the municipality. Each has its own building history, and so its own pipework.

Workers' housing from the Philips era

In Philipsdorp and the Drents Dorp you'll find homes that Philips had built for its staff in the first decades of the twentieth century. Old clay pipes still run beneath some of the gardens, and the trees in these neighbourhoods have grown large. It's a combination we know well: a blockage that comes back within a year of being cleared, because the roots simply carry on growing. A root-cutting head on the drain machine clears the roots, and the camera shows us whether the pipe itself is still intact.

Villapark: big trees, long connections

The Villapark is made up of spacious pre-war houses set well back from the street, with front gardens and trees as old as the houses themselves. A long sewer connection under a front garden like that gives roots plenty of chances to find a joint. A typical pattern is a drain that runs freely in spring but starts to slow down after a dry summer. The camera shows exactly how many metres along the pipe the roots are getting in, so the repair can be carried out right where it's needed.

Post-war expansion in Woensel

Woensel-Noord was largely built after the war, with blocks of flats, terraced houses and home zones (woonerven), such as those in the Achtse Barrier. In the flats, residents share a soil stack, so a blockage at the bottom shows up straight away in the flats on the lowest floors. The houses usually have plastic drainage with inspection chambers, so a blockage is easy to get at, and it's more often in the drain under the garden than inside the house.

Strijp-S and Meerhoven

On Strijp-S, people live in former Philips factory buildings. New waste pipes have been threaded through the old structures, sometimes running horizontally for long distances. In Meerhoven, next to the airport, rainwater often goes into the ground rather than into the sewer. Blockages in that neighbourhood are therefore more likely to be in the indoor pipework than in the sewer under the street.

Stratumseind, student houses and grease

The nightlife district

On Stratumseind and throughout the rest of the nightlife district, restaurant and bar kitchens work flat out. Grease that goes down the drain cools in the pipe and sticks to the pipe wall. Food scraps, coffee grounds and napkins then cling to it. A grease trap catches much of it, but only if it's emptied often enough. With high-pressure jetting, we clean the kitchen waste pipe along its full length, right down to the underground drain. As the bars and restaurants here stay open late, we try to schedule this kind of cleaning for a quiet time of day.

Student blocks around TU/e and Fontys

With TU/e (Eindhoven University of Technology) and Fontys, Eindhoven has plenty of students, and some of them live in blocks with one shared kitchen per corridor. That can mean ten or more people using a single kitchen drain, each cooking at a different time. Fat from the pan, rice and leftover pasta go down the sink, and the long horizontal pipe to the soil stack gradually silts up. Report a blockage to the property manager first; if they can't be reached and the water is standing in the sink, you can also call us yourself.

Downpipes and rainwater soakaways

Sandy ground lets rainwater soak away easily. That's why a growing number of homes in Eindhoven no longer drain their rainwater into the sewer, but into a soakaway crate, a gravel soakaway or a swale (a shallow grassy dip, called a wadi in Dutch) in the garden. That's good for the water table, but it does need maintenance.

How a crate slowly silts up

Leaves, moss and sand wash off the roof with every shower. Some of it is caught by the leaf guard, but the rest ends up in the silt trap or the feed pipe, and eventually in the crate itself. After a few years, the water can't get in as quickly, and in a heavy downpour the downpipe is the first thing to overflow. If that happens, downpipe unblocking is the first step. We then check that the water is reaching the crate again.

Check for yourself after a downpour

After heavy rain, take a quick look outside. If water is sloshing out of a joint in the downpipe, the gully at the foot of the pipe is full to the brim, or water lies in the swale much longer than usual, something's not right. In autumn, clear the leaves out of the gutter and empty the leaf guard. That stops the crate from gradually filling up with silt.

From your call to a free-flowing drain

The phone call

Call 085 333 4698, day or night. Tell us which drain has stopped working, what happens when you run water and what you've already tried. That's enough for us to make an initial assessment and give you a price estimate. If you're happy to go ahead, an engineer sets off and is usually with you within the hour.

Once at your home, the engineer starts where the water is standing and works from there towards the blockage. A trap can be cleaned by hand; a blockage further down the pipe is tackled with a drain snake or the electric drain machine. If you live in an older neighbourhood with lots of trees, the engineer brings a root cutter as well. Afterwards, they'll tell you what they found and how to prevent it from happening again.

While you wait for the engineer

• Stop running water into the blocked drain, and switch off the washing machine and dishwasher.
• On a washbasin or shower, don't go any further than a plunger.
• Leave chemical drain cleaners on the shelf; they rarely dissolve a grease plug and can splash back dangerously.
• Have towels ready if the water threatens to overflow.

Preventing a repeat mostly comes down to good kitchen habits: after frying, pour fat and oil into a jar or an old bottle, not down the sink. Only flush toilet paper, and fit a hair catcher in the shower. If you live in an older neighbourhood with trees in the garden or along the pavement, have the sewer connection jetted every few years.

Drain unblocking in Eindhoven: price, call-out charge and out-of-hours rate

Unblocking starts from €129. The call-out charge isn't included in that price. If you call in the evening, at night, at the weekend or on a public holiday, we charge an out-of-hours rate. For larger jobs, such as full sewer cleaning with a camera inspection or clearing a silted-up soakaway crate, you can ask for a quote. Whatever the job, you get a price estimate before the engineer starts work. Customers rate us 5/5 based on 48 Google reviews.

Blocked sewer in Eindhoven: who is responsible?

Blocked drains outside the house? Then the question is whose job it is to sort them out. The rules are much the same across the Netherlands. The pipes on your own property, including the garden drain up to roughly the property boundary, are the homeowner's responsibility. The sewer under the street, and usually the last stretch of the connection under the pavement, fall to the municipality. There's often an inspection chamber on that boundary. If the chamber is empty while water is standing in the house, the blockage is on your side; if it's full, the blockage is further towards the street.

A downpipe that drains into a crate or swale in your garden is entirely your own responsibility. If you rent, report blockages in shared pipes and in the sewer connection to your landlord. In a block of flats, the soil stacks and the underground drain beneath the building usually fall under the VvE (owners' association).

From garden drain to attic: what Eindhoven residents often call about

When it comes to drain unblocking in Eindhoven, a few calls come up time and again.

The inspection chamber in the garden fills up every summer

In an older home with trees nearby, this is the classic sign of root intrusion. Use as little water as possible and make sure the chamber cover is easy to get at. Once the drain has been cleared, have a camera inspection done straight away to see how far the roots have got, or you'll be facing a full chamber again next year.

A gurgling toilet in a flat in Woensel

If your toilet gurgles when the neighbours upstairs flush or do the washing-up, the shared soil stack below you is partly blocked. Don't try flushing to see if that clears it. Warn the neighbours and the property manager, and have a bucket ready. If it's only your own toilet that's blocked, toilet unblocking usually takes no more than a toilet snake.

The washing machine drain in the attic overflows

In many Eindhoven terraced houses, the washing machine sits in the attic and empties into a standpipe. Over time, lint, hair and detergent residue narrow that pipe until the water spills over the top while the machine is pumping out. Stop the machine at once and mop up before the water soaks through the ceiling.

What we do as a drain unblocking company in Eindhoven

As a drain unblocking company in Eindhoven, we focus entirely on blockages. In the kitchen, it's usually grease and food scraps; when we unblock a kitchen sink, we clean both the trap and the pipe behind it. In the bathroom, the problem is often the washbasin, where hair, soap and toothpaste coat the inside of the trap. Unblocking a washbasin is usually a quick job.

For drain unblocking in Eindhoven outside the home, in the garden drain or the sewer connection, we use high-pressure sewer cleaning. If we suspect roots or subsidence, a drain camera inspection follows. You can watch the footage on screen yourself, and we'll talk you through the options.

Other Brabant cities and beyond

Afvoer Ontstoppen works throughout the Netherlands, so that includes other cities in Brabant and further afield. To the north we cover Den Bosch, and to the west Tilburg and Breda. Over towards Gelderland, you can call us in Nijmegen. Each of these cities has its own page, as do the other places in our list of locations.

For drain unblocking in Eindhoven, from Strijp-S to Blixembosch, call 085 333 4698, including outside office hours.