Gully Trap Repairs Wellington

The gully trap is the small grated dish outside your kitchen, laundry or bathroom wall where the waste pipes drop into the drain. It does two jobs. Its water seal stops sewer gas coming back up, and its rim is the planned overflow point for the house, so if the drain downstream blocks, wastewater spills onto the ground outside instead of up through your shower.

Cheeky's Plumbers repairs, replaces and raises gully traps across Wellington City, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and the Kāpiti Coast. Our certifying drainlayers fix the trap itself, check the drain behind it, and set the rim at the height the Building Code expects, so it keeps protecting the house through the next winter storm.

Pricing: quotes are free, and every job gets a fixed price before we start, so there are no surprises on the invoice.

Gully Trap Repairs Jobs We Handle Across Wellington

• Overflowing gully trap
• Gully trap replacement
• Raise gully trap
• Cracked gully trap repair
• Smelly gully trap
• Overflow relief gully installation

Signs your gully trap needs attention

Some faults are obvious. Others only show up in a heavy downpour or when the washing machine pumps out. Book a check if you notice any of these: If the gully overflows because the line beyond it is blocked, that is a blocked drain job rather than a gully repair.

• Water or toilet paper sitting in the dish, or spilling over the rim
• A sewer smell by the laundry or kitchen wall
• Cracks in the concrete surround or the dish
• The rim level with, or below, the lawn, garden or paving
• Rainwater pooling around the grate after a southerly
• A missing, broken or concreted-over grate

Why gully traps overflow, crack and smell

An overflowing gully trap is a symptom rather than the fault. Usually the drain past it is choked by tree roots, fat or a broken earthenware section, and the trap is just doing its job as the release point. If yours keeps overflowing, we clear it and then run a CCTV drain inspection so you know the cause.

Smells usually mean the water seal has dried out, cracked or been bypassed. A trap that only gets a trickle, such as one serving a spare basin, can lose its seal in a dry spell. Cracking comes from settlement, tree roots lifting the surround, and ground movement. On older villas and cottages in suburbs such as Mt Victoria, Newtown and Ngaio, the original traps can be many decades old and simply worn out. On soft, low-lying ground around Petone and the Rongotai isthmus, an earthquake can also crack a rigid surround or shift the pipe beneath it.

How It Works

Gully height and overflow relief rules

When a gully works as the overflow relief point (often called an ORG), its height matters. Building Code clause G13 guidance requires the overflow rim to sit at least 150 mm below the overflow level of the lowest fixture it protects, such as a shower tray or floor waste. BRANZ guidance adds that the rim should be at least 25 mm above a paved surface and 100 mm above unpaved ground, so surface water cannot run in. The grate also needs to lift freely if the drain surcharges.

New paving, raised gardens and years of topsoil often leave older gullies sitting too low. In a city where July 2022 was the wettest July on record, a low gully is an open door for rain to get into the wastewater system. Tiaki Wai is clear that roof downpipes must connect to stormwater, not wastewater, and that a downpipe feeding a gully trap needs redirecting. Our stormwater drains team can do that at the same visit.

What we do: clear, repair, raise or replace

Most gully jobs come down to one of four fixes. We clear a blocked trap with a drain machine or jetter. We patch or rebuild a cracked surround. We raise a low gully with a riser or a new dish set at the correct height, regrading the paving so water falls away from it. Or, where the trap is broken below ground, we dig it out and fit a new PVC gully with a fresh connection to the drain.

If the drain behind the gully is cracked or full of roots, clearing the trap alone will not last. In that case we show you the camera footage and quote for drain repairs, so you can decide with the facts in front of you.

Gully trap repair cost

The final price depends on what we find: whether the trap needs raising, rebuilding or full replacement, how deep it sits, whether it is under a deck or concrete that has to be cut, and whether the drain beyond it needs work. You get a fixed price before we start.

Common Wellington gully trap problems

Post-war state houses in Naenae, Tawa and Tītahi Bay often have the gully tight against the weatherboards, sometimes buried under decades of garden. On narrow inner-city lots in Newtown and Thorndon, with minimal side yards, the gully is often wedged into a tight gap where a path or bin area has been built up around it. Hillside homes can have a gully at the bottom of a retaining wall or a long flight of steps. Newer townhouses tend to have gullies boxed in by decks or fences, which BRANZ notes still need clear access above the trap. We work around all of these and leave the gully where it can be seen, cleaned and reached.

Why Choose Cheeky's Plumbers for Gully Trap Repairs

Gully Trap Repairs FAQs

Gully Trap Repairs Across Wellington

Our gully trap repairs team works in every Wellington suburb. Find your local plumbers:

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