Design Challenges: Kitchen Flooding !

Water began to flow into kitchen..*sob*

...after 45 minutes.. *wring hand*

...next morning, after blockage was cleared... *wrinkle nose*

Our lovely kitchen was flooded some time ago.*heartache*

Many of us will encounter that situation at one time or another. In this article we shared what we did to solve our drainage problem, in the hope our experience will be useful to you.

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So, what would you do when you encounter a drainage problem? Should you call the hdb town council? Or managing agent if you live in a private apartment? Or your own plumber?

You call the town council if the hdb common service pipe is chocked. But you call your own plumber if the blockage is in your internal kitchen pipe. Knowing whom to call will save you time, heartache and money.

Here was what we did:

We began by investigating the cause of the flooding. We recalled the last time we flushed water down our kitchen sink was barely 40 minutes ago; the water had drained from the sink without any problem. We were therefore certain no waste matter clogged our kitchen drainage pipe.

Drawing of common drainage pipe:

Take a look at the drainage pipe drawing. If blockage had occurred in the common drainage pipe, the water level discharged from all flat units above our unit level would rise and flow into our unit. That won't occur if the blockage occurred in our kitchen pipe - the water would simply stagnate until the blockage was cleared. Luckily we recalled that we last used the kitchen sink about 40 minutes prior to the flooding, which meant the common drainage pipe was blocked and caused our kitchen to be flooded!

That must be the reason, we concluded! We called the town council.

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Note: We also regularly maintained our drainage piping system. You should too - find out how in a related post.

Also note that the kitchen drainage system is separate and distinct from the bathroom / toilet drainage system. Therefore you can rule out your toilet drainage pipe if only your kitchen is flooded.

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Our town council ("TC") responded quite swiftly to our call. The TC maintenance supervisor and the area manager visited our premises to check on the flooding situation. After listening to our explanation and doing some tests of their own, they agreed with our assessment. It was late in the evening,

Next morning a plumber and his assistant came. They asked to view the common drainage pipe. Luckily - although we had concealed the common drainage pipe behind a partition wall - we could open the partition doors once the fridge was moved away. See how our kitchen drainage system was concealed behind a partition.

Flexible pipe to probe for obstacle

After gaining access to the common drainage pipe, the plumber used a long flexible "stick" to probe / clear any waste matter that may have caused the blockage. He confirmed there was indeed a blockage, and that the blockage was in the common drainage pipe!

Inspecting the flat unit below

Next, he went to inspect the unit below our flat. The unit was tenanted to a foreign family.

True enough, the ceiling in the unit below had flooded copiously the night before. The tenant told us he had called the landlord owner but the owner had told him to solve his own problem!!

The plumber got down to work. He decided to cut the common drainage pipe under the kitchen sink after ascertaining the location of the blockage.

After the pipe was cut, he extracted a piece of clothing from the grimy mess. That was the cause of the blockage!

Urrggh..so gross, the cause of the blockage!!