Drain Unblocking Rotterdam

Low ground, tall towers: drainage in Rotterdam

The ground here is soft clay and peat, and many neighbourhoods lie below NAP (Amsterdam Ordnance Datum, roughly sea level). Pre-war homes rest on wooden piles, but the ground around the house settles and the sewer connection sinks with it. After the bombing of 14 May 1940, the city centre was largely rebuilt, first with walk-up and deck-access flats and later with ever taller residential towers. For drain unblocking in Rotterdam, that means no two addresses are alike.

Sagging sewer connections

In older streets, subsidence robs the sewer connection of its fall. Waste water no longer flows through freely; instead it sits in the pipe and leaves silt and grease behind. Often the first thing you notice is a drain that keeps gurgling long after you've had a shower, or a musty sewer smell in the hallway. High-pressure jetting will get a pipe like this clean again, but it won't get rid of the low point. That's why it's worth having the pipe checked with a camera after a blockage.

Pumping stations, water squares and storage beneath the city

Water doesn't make its own way to the sea here. Waste water and rainwater have to be pumped out via pumping stations, and in a heavy downpour the sewer suddenly has a great deal of extra water to handle. That's why the municipality is creating water squares, such as the Benthemplein, and there's a large underground water storage facility beneath the car park at the Museumpark. That helps the street, but does little good if your own pipe is already half blocked. In that case, the water comes back up through the lowest drain in your home the moment a cloudburst hits.

Prins Alexander: living in a deep polder

Ommoord, Zevenkamp and Nesselande lie in the Prins Alexanderpolder, a reclaimed polder several metres below sea level. The homes here are newer than in the old city, with plastic sewer pipes and inspection chambers around the house. In the newest parts, rainwater and waste water are usually carried away in separate pipes. A misconnection after a renovation, or a garden drain full of leaves and sand, only comes to light when it really pours.

Drain unblocking in Rotterdam: a different problem in every district

If you have a blocked drain in Rotterdam, the age of your home largely determines where we need to look. These are the patterns we see time and again across the city.

Post-war flats in Pendrecht and Lombardijen

In Pendrecht, Lombardijen and the blocks of flats around the city centre, the residents on each stairwell share a soil stack. The bottom section, where the pipe bends into the underground drain, is the first to block. If you live on the ground or first floor, you'll see water rising in the shower drain or kitchen sink, while the neighbours upstairs notice nothing at all. In residential towers, we work together with the building manager, as the pipes there usually run through enclosed service shafts.

Spangen, Bergpolder and the Tarwewijk

In these pre-war neighbourhoods, you'll sometimes still find the original clay pipes under gardens and pavements. The socket joints between the pipe sections shift as the ground subsides, and roots and sand work their way in through the gaps. On each stairwell, the waste pipes from the upstairs and downstairs flats come together, so a blockage in the underground drain immediately affects several households.

The garden villages of Vreewijk and Heijplaat

Vreewijk, south of the river, and Heijplaat, by the port, are garden villages from the early twentieth century, with terraced houses, gardens and, by now, some sizeable trees. In Vreewijk especially, we regularly find root intrusion in the pipes under the gardens. A camera inspection shows whether the pipe is simply dirty or damaged as well; the engineer removes the roots themselves with a cutter on the drain machine.

Restaurants along the Witte de Withstraat and on Katendrecht

The Witte de Withstraat, the Nieuwe Binnenweg, the area around the Markthal and Katendrecht are home to lots of restaurants and food stalls, often with flats above them. Kitchen grease solidifies as soon as it reaches the cool underground drain, and then traps everything that comes past. Even a grease trap won't hold everything back if it isn't emptied often enough. We jet the pipe clean along its full length, not just the first stretch behind the trap.

How we work as a drain unblocking company in Rotterdam

It all starts with a call to 085 333 4698; you can reach us 24 hours a day. On the phone, we ask a few targeted questions: do you live in a flat or a house, which floor are you on, and are the neighbours having problems too? From your answers, we can often tell straight away whether the problem is in your own drain or in a shared pipe.

You then get a price estimate. If you're happy to go ahead, the engineer drives over through the Maastunnel or across the Erasmusbrug or the Van Brienenoordbrug, depending on where you live. They're usually with you within the hour, although that depends on the time of day and the traffic. At your home, the engineer first finds the cause, then clears the blockage and tells you what they found.

Which tools they use depends on where the blockage is. A plunger or hand-held drain snake will do for a blocked trap. For a soil stack or an underground drain tens of metres long, the engineer brings in the electric drain machine or the high-pressure jetter. If the same problem keeps coming back, they look inside the pipe with a camera. That's how a good drain unblocking service works: first understand why things are going wrong, and only then fix it.

Blocked sewer in Rotterdam: who pays for which part?

If the blockage is under the garden or the pavement, the question of who gets the bill soon comes up. Roughly the same split applies throughout the Netherlands. The section of sewer connection on your own land, up to about the property boundary, is the homeowner's responsibility. The street sewer falls to the municipality, and usually so does the section under public ground. Exactly where that line lies at your home can vary from street to street.

Many people in Rotterdam rent their home, often from a housing association. With a blocked underground drain or soil stack, it's generally up to the landlord to sort it out, whereas a blocked trap in your own kitchen usually counts as one of the minor repairs that fall to the tenant. In a building with a VvE (owners' association), the shared pipes count as communal parts of the building. The engineer establishes where the blockage is, so you know who to turn to next.

Four common situations in Rotterdam

When we're called out for drain unblocking in Rotterdam, some problems come up time and again. Here's how to handle them until the engineer arrives.

Grey water in the shower of a ground-floor flat

If water is coming up in your shower tray when you're not using any yourself, the water from the flats above isn't draining away. Turn off your own taps, knock on the neighbours' doors and ask them not to flush for a while. Lay towels around the drain, because things can escalate quickly when a soil stack is full.

A garden inspection chamber that fills up in a cloudburst

If the chamber in the back garden only fills up during heavy rain and then empties again afterwards, the street sewer just can't cope for the time being. If it stays full in dry weather too, there's a blockage between that chamber and the street sewer. In that case, use as little water as possible and have the pipe jetted through.

A restaurant kitchen that grinds to a halt on a Friday night

It always seems to happen on the busiest night: the sink fills up and won't drain. Switch off the dishwasher, stop running water down that drain and check whether the grease trap is full. The engineer cleans the kitchen pipe and the underground drain with high-pressure jetting, and can come outside opening hours if that suits you better.

Sewer smell in a deck-access flat

If a drain smells but isn't blocked, it's often because the water seal in a rarely used drain has dried out, for example in a storeroom or a second toilet. Run the tap for a little while. If the smell lingers, a partial blockage further along could be the cause.

The price of drain unblocking in Rotterdam and the out-of-hours rate

Unblocking costs from €129. The call-out charge comes on top of that; it isn't included in the price, and we'll tell you what it is beforehand. If you call in the evening, at night, at the weekend or on a public holiday, an out-of-hours rate applies. For jobs where the scope isn't clear in advance, such as an entire sewer run under a row of houses or regular maintenance for a restaurant, you can ask for a quote first. You'll still get a price estimate up front. Our customers rate us 5/5 based on 48 Google reviews.

Services for Rotterdam homes and businesses

Blocked toilet? It's one of the problems we hear about most in this city. For toilet unblocking, the engineer uses a toilet snake or, if the blockage is in the soil stack, an electric machine. If the water in the bathroom is slow to drain, there's usually hair and soap in the trap or the first stretch of pipe, and washbasin unblocking is a quick job.

Grease in a home or restaurant kitchen calls for kitchen sink unblocking. If the problem is in the underground drain or the garden sewer, high-pressure sewer cleaning is the method of choice. And because Rotterdam has to cope with a lot of water in a short time during heavy rain, it also pays to have us unblock your downpipe as soon as it overflows or sloshes in a downpour.

Prevention and first aid

While you wait for the engineer, use as little water as possible and, if you live in a block of flats, ask the neighbours not to flush or shower for a while either. Don't reach for a chemical drain cleaner: it won't get you anywhere in a shared soil stack, and it makes the engineer's job more dangerous. In the long run, these habits help:

• don't pour frying fat or gravy down the sink; collect it in a sealed bottle and put it in the general waste;
• put wet wipes, sanitary towels and cotton buds in the bin;
• run plenty of hot tap water down the kitchen drain now and then;
• if your home has a garden or trees, have the garden drains checked every so often.

If you're a member of a VvE in a block of flats or a residential tower, consider having the soil stacks and the underground drain cleaned at regular intervals. A single blockage at the bottom of a building soon costs more in disruption and damage than a preventive clean of the whole complex.

Beyond the city on the Maas

Drain unblocking in Rotterdam is only part of what we do: we work throughout the Netherlands. To the north, we also cover The Hague and Zoetermeer. Further south, you can call us in Breda, and to the east in Utrecht. Our list of locations shows which cities have their own page.

Got a blockage right now? For drain unblocking in Rotterdam, call 085 333 4698, day or night.