A toilet that keeps blocking is telling you something.
At Koru School in Māngere, the staff and admin toilets had been blocking on repeat. Each time the line was cleared, the problem came back. For a large Year 1-8 school with a busy admin block, that is more than a nuisance. It is a daily disruption, and every repeat callout is money spent on the symptom rather than the cause.
Watershed Group, who manage property for the school, engaged Abbotts to find out what was really going on.
Why a recurring blockage is never just a blockage.
A drain that blocks once can be bad luck. Wet wipes, a foreign object, a root that has found its way in. A drain that blocks again and again in the same place almost always has a structural cause underneath. Jetting or rodding gets things flowing today, but if the pipe itself is the problem, you are booking the same job next month.
Before anyone picked up a breaker, we needed to see inside the line.
The repair: through the concrete, fix the fall, make it good.
The dipped section sat under concrete, which is where some contractors start hedging. Our crew, led by Stephen, cut and broke out the slab over the located fault, exposed the dipped and holding sewer line, and repaired it so the line drains the way it should. The trench was then backfilled, compacted and the concrete reinstated.
Because this was the school's admin block, the finish mattered as much as the fix. The reinstated area had to look right, not just work right, and the team planned the job that way from the start.
Working in a live school without causing a fuss.
A school does not stop because a drainage crew is on site. Students, staff, visitors, deliveries, the lot. Our job is to get in, do the work properly, and get out without creating stress for anyone. Clear communication about what is happening and when. A tidy, safe site. A crew that remembers they are working in someone's workplace.
Stan Whata, Principal at Koru School, put it better than we could:
"The contracted works that Abbotts completed for us was really well done. They did everything they said they would do, in a professional and respectful manner. Stephen and his crew were efficient and did not cause any undue stress or problems while they were onsite. Their work and work ethics were also of a high quality. The problem solving and approach to ensure we had a finished product that was aesthetically acceptable was also well thought out.
It is not often that my admiration for contractors sits very high - probably because we are used to being over promised and under delivered. This was not the case with Abbotts - they delivered what they said they would deliver to the quality they said they would. I also appreciated the level of expertise of their trade - which came through in their discussions and their work.
In short, I am pretty happy with their work and will probably use them for our on-going repair and maintenance."
Stan Whata, Principal, Koru School
Blocked drains in Māngere or South Auckland? We are just down the road.
Call 0800 274 678 or book a job online.
