Baby wipes and sanitary towels are probably the single largest cause of drain blockages. They may be small and one would think that they will easily go down the drain. The problem is their strength.

If you hold a few sheets of good toilet paper under a running basin tap, you will find that the paper disappears between your fingers, completely breaks up and easily flows down the waste.

Baby wipes and sanitary towels do not break up even after many months. If a baby wipe gets hooked on a rough patch inside the drain, it will stay there while more and more waste keeps piling on behind it, until the drain is blocked. A good way of disposal is to wrap it in a nappy bag and put it in the bin.

It is best never to use bleach. The active ingredient in domestic bleach is sodium hypochlorite. This chemical kills most viruses and bacteria including the good bacteria.

Your drain is not only a pipe. It is an ecosystem and relies on various strains of bacteria to process waste. These are gram-positive bacteria and are harmless. During this process the waste is broken up and odours are removed leaving a clean drain without any bad smells. Sodium hypochlorite kills these bacteria. Normally the first bacteria that return to the drain are harmful gram-negative strains. These gram-negative bacteria are often the cause of smells.

Bleach should also never be mixed with anything containing ammonia, since chloramine gas can be produced from this combination. Urine contains ammonia, so bleach should not be used to clean urine spills. Chloramine gas is highly toxic.

If you want to use enviro-friendly alternatives to the water flush toilet, you may want to consider either the Dry Earth Toilet or the Compost Toilet. Technology and style have come a long way since the day of a bucket and trowel. You can even install a remote compost toilet whereby the pan is installed in the bathroom and the waste is automatically converted to compost outside the house, like in the potting shed for example. They are odour free, maintenance free and a cheaper alternative than a cesspit.

Save a lot of money by installing a water filter rather than buying water in bottles. Good carbon filters can cost less than £10 and provide 2,000 litres of the purest water, which is half a penny per litre for top quality water.

Dispose of food safely down the drain by installing a waste disposal unit in your existing kitchen sink. These units grind up all food waste and safely dispose of it down the kitchen drain. It also helps in getting rid of smells from the bin.

The process is much simpler than it sounds. It uses a heat pump that collects heat from underground and amplifies it. This amplified heat is used for heating in your house. It is the most reliable of all low carbon sources and works 100% of the time, unlike wind or solar. The process can also be reversed to cool the house in the summer. It is currently quite expensive and does not make short term economic sense, however it does make a lot of environmental sense.

One of the things in our experience that creates the most disruption and biggest expense for our customers is hidden pipes. When decorating or putting in the new bathroom always ensure that there is access to all the pipes for the full length of the pipe. You do not have to leave pipes under floor boards or behind tiles. There are many ways to hide pipes while still being able to access them quickly in an emergency without causing damage.

Insulate all water pipes outside the house, in the garages and in the loft. Insulate all pipes that are outside the areas where you have central heating. Not only will this reduce the likelihood of frozen and burst pipes, but you will also save energy as a lot of heat is lost through un-insulated pipes. Pipe insulation is cheap and available from all hardware DIY stores and the work can be done easily by home owners.

Whether you do DIY plumbing or get a professional plumber out, always install isolation valves in the feed pipe to every appliance, whether it is a tap or a washing machine. This allows you to turn the water off to each appliance without affecting the rest of the house. It will also help to stop leaks immediately. Isolation valves are cheap and will save you a lot of hassle, damage and expense if a problem occurs.

There are a lot of products on the market that remove lime scale from your appliances. That is all well if your drains are new. If you live in an older house, you may have clay drains that are connected with lime cement. Acids and chemicals that remove lime scale will slowly dissolve the lime scale cement, leaving your drain pipes with open joints and causing leaking sewage, blockages and allowing roots to penetrate. A much better alternative when in a hard water area is to treat the water before it gets into your appliances. This treatment will prevent lime scale forming and may even be cheaper than the treatment to remove the lime scale.

Do not remove or cover manholes. The temptation is always there to cover or remove ugly manholes in the garden or patio. Unblocking and repairing drains without good access is significantly more disruptive and expensive. It may mean that the garden or even the floors in the house will need digging up. There are always alternative manhole covers that can be installed without spoiling your floors, patio or driveway.

Rain water capture is simply using the free rain water that falls on your roof for places where you do not need to use drinking water. For example: watering the garden, flushing the toilets and doing the laundry. You can also have a capture system that uses your shower and bath water (grey water) for the garden. These systems do not need to be very expensive: it is amazing how much you can do to save the environment with a very small budget.

Saving water by flushing with less water is good, so is getting a special toilet that only needs a little water. But always get someone to inspect the condition of your drains first, e.g. a CCTV inspection and a flow inspection. The toilet may need less water but maybe your drains need more to move the waste away effectively.

Another feasible solution could be a Compost Toilet.

If you have a cesspit or septic tank and the soil is not good enough for a soak away, e.g. clay soil, you may have to empty the cesspit/septic tank frequently at great expense. A waste treatment plant may be a very cost effective option. Small treatment plants are virtually maintenance free and are so effective that you may be able to discharge the treated water into a nearby, brook, stream or canal, or even to a storm water drain alongside a nearby road.

Spend some time making sure you know where all your stop taps are and what they turn off. When you have a burst pipe, a small relatively cheap problem can very soon become a very expensive problem if you cannot find your stop valve and you have to wait 1 - 2 hours for a plumber to arrive. Also make sure that the stop taps are working by turning them off and on. Do this at least twice a year to ensure they do not seize up. A good plan is to write it on your birthday calendar so that you do not forget.

It is better to avoid all forms of toilet and air fresheners that fit over the toilet bowl. We often find that for one reason or other they end up in the toilet and get flushed away. They normally only go around the bend in the bottom of the toilet and then get stuck. In most of the cases we find, the toilet had to be removed in order to dislodge the air freshener.

Furthermore air fresheners do not work. They give off a perfume that is strong enough to blind the receptors in your nose so that you have the illusion that the bad odour is gone, similar to someone shining a spot light in your eyes so that you think the room light is switched off. The only effective way is to get rid of the cause of the smell. A clean bathroom and toilet will not smell. Temporary unpleasant odours will disappear in minutes by opening the window.

Sometimes toilet paper can be the cause of regular drain blockages. Good toilet paper will completely break up into tiny flakes when submerged in water. You can test toilet paper by putting 3 sheets on your open hand with outstretched fingers. Hold your hand in the basin under a running tap, and the toilet paper should easily break up and flush down the basin waste without causing a blockage.

If you have an emergency with water leakage and you are not sure where the water is coming from, or if you are not familiar with your plumbing system, it is best to do the following five things immediately.

1. Turn off your mains supply. It will be close to where it enters the house and is most often under the kitchen sink.
2. Turn on the cold and hot water taps in the kitchen sink and leave them on.
3. Turn on the hot water tap in the bath and leave it on.
4. Turn off the central heating.
5. Call a plumber or informed friend/relative for advice and tell them what you did.