Down the drain
Welsh Water cleans water and sends it down pipes to our houses for us to use. We wash our clothes, wash the dishes, have a bath and go to the toilet and make that lovely clear water dirty!
We don’t want it anymore, so we flush the toilet and pull the plug out and off it goes down the drain. But have you ever thought what happens to all that waste water or do you just flush and forget? Welsh Water has over 19000 km of pipes carrying the dirty water to our waste water treatment works where the water is cleaned and put back into the river or the sea.
Unfortunately it is not just water that ends up in the sewage network. People flush items down the toilet that may cause the pipes to block. A sewer pipe carrying the water away from a house is only 10 cm in diameter so it is easily blocked. A blocked pipe may mean an overflowing sewer which could mean gardens and roads are flooded with sewage or even the inside of houses – yuck!
We need to look after our sewers and be careful what we throw down the drain. Fat, oil and grease from our kitchen sinks will also block the pipes in the sewer network..
Did you know?…
1 Fat, Oil and Grease that goes down your drains can clog up sewers. This can cause them to overflow when there’s lots of rain.
2 Cotton buds are so small they can get through the screens at our treatment works. They end up as litter on our beaches.
3 Drainage pipes from your home are usually 10cm in diameter. They are only designed for human waste and toilet tissue!
4 Blockages on the public sewer network cost water companies many millions of pounds each year, which end up on all our bills!
