Bağcılar Car Park Vacuum Truck

If the sludge left on the floor after the water is removed dries into smell and dust, the line under that layer may be blocked as well. The real blockage is often a greasy layer built up in the grate or the lower channel. The Cantley team inspects the entrance and the water level on site before opening the drain, shares the cause with you, and then decides which vehicle goes in.

Much of the building stock in Bağcılar consists of terraced apartment blocks that went up quickly in the 1980s and 1990s. In these buildings the shared stacks serve far more people than they were designed for, and the bathrooms and kitchens added later, together with the heavy water use of crowded households, make sediment build up fast in the narrow horizontal connections. That is why people living on basement and ground floors are often the first to notice backflow.

Two situations stand out in this district. In a student flat or dormitory with a car park in the basement, shared water use is heavy, so the puddle at the foot of the ramp quickly turns into a smell. In buildings with a small workshop in the basement, thread, fabric dust, paint residue and grease get into the drain; when the drain sits lower than the street line, blockage and backflow risk are assessed together. Before the visit, locating the manhole cover and keeping the route clear for the large vehicle to pull up will speed things up, and so will telling building management if the hose has to pass through a shared area.