Family's sewer flood cat-astrophe
A West Sussex household struggled to stay paw-sitive after a neighbour flushed a bag of cat litter down their toilet - causing flooding to their kitchen.
A whisker away from causing serious damage
This Burgess Hill family had plenty to meow-n about when wastewater started pouring out their dishwasher and kitchen sink.
Puns aside, internal flooding caused by sewer blockages can be genuinely traumatic for those impacted, and all too often it is caused by households disposing of ‘unflushables’ down sinks and toilets.
Blocked sewers are the single biggest cause of pollution and flooding incidents – from manholes spilling into streams, to gardens and homes filling with wastewater.
Last week, when our teams attended this Burgess Hill address and lifted a nearby manhole to poke in a CCTV camera, the cause was clear.
Someone had flushed an entire sack of cat litter down the loo. Designed to absorb, swell up and harden when wet, the litter has done an excellent job - just not for our sewer pipes.
Sewer Network Manager Roger Williams said:
“It was like a lump of cement totally blocking the sewer. We do see some strange stuff but this was a first. Initially I thought it was cement and our heavy jet wouldn’t be able to clear it, forcing us to bring in some really heavy equipment. Fortunately, we were able to manage without and also help this poor family with the clean-up.
“Our introduction of more than 22,000 artificial intelligence monitors across our sewer network really help us detect when sewers in blockage ‘hotspots’ are backing up, allowing us to get to far more blockages before the problem turns into a crisis.
"But with 40,000km of sewers, it’s absolutely vital that people understand not to put the wrong things down loos or sinks, and report any potential issues as soon as possible."
Every year our blockage busters deal with up to 50,000 blockages.
The biggest causes are unflushable items like wet wipes and period products down toilets, and fat, oil and grease being flushed down kitchen pipes.