But this gurgle was different. This one came from the kitchen sink at 11:47 PM, just as he was settling into his armchair with a mug of Horlicks. It was a low, wet, throaty glub-glub-glub , like a giant swallowing something it didn’t like. Then came the smell.
At 3:47 AM, the water finally flowed. The manhole gave a final, wet belch, and then—silence. Sweet, clean, flowing silence. The surface of the water in the drain was smooth as glass.
“It’s not your sink, Mr. Ellis,” Kev said, straightening up. “Your internal pipework’s fine. It’s the shared lateral drain. See that?” He pointed a thick finger into the hole. “The water’s backing up from the main sewer. There’s a fatberg.” yorkshire water blocked drain
“A what?”
The Yorkshire Water van arrived at 2:17 PM. Two men: Kev, the driver, who had a shaved head and a forensic approach to problems, and young Ash, who was on his first month out of training and still thought drains smelled of roses. But this gurgle was different
The next morning, Yorkshire Water put out a statement. They used words like ‘unprecedented’, ‘preventable’, and ‘fines of up to £5,000 for businesses misusing the sewer network’. Frank from the chippy suddenly announced he was ‘retiring for health reasons’. A letter was hand-delivered to every house on Bridge Street: Don’t pour fat down the sink. Don’t flush wet wipes. Your drain is not a magic portal.
While Yorkshire Water clears thousands of blockages a year, a significant portion are caused by what we flush. The county spends millions unblocking sewers clogged by "unflushables." Then came the smell
There are exceptions, particularly in older properties or if you share a drain with neighbours (which is common in terraced houses and semi-detached properties built before the 1930s), but generally, if the problem is affecting multiple homes, it is almost certainly a public sewer issue.