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Tai Tong, Shap Pat Heung · Private estate
Completed 2013 · 12 towers, 2,580 flats · bathroom floor tiles & open-kitchen drains
The Reach is at 11 Shap Pat Heung Road, Tai Tong, Yuen Long, developed jointly by Henderson Land and New World Development.
Last reviewed ·
Choose the problem you are seeing to read the likely cause and next step.
According to an Apple Daily report on 23 January 2014, an owner collecting the keys during the early handover period posted photographs on an owners' forum saying the bathroom was full of hollow-sounding tiles. A further Apple Daily report on 17 July 2014 (see sources below) described an owner complaining of hollow wall tiles on the utility platform, with more than ten still hollow when the paper visited six months later; a spokesperson for the management office replied at the time that the repairs had been completed in March, including replacing some utility-platform wall tiles, while the owner disputed that account. Hollow tiles are a tiling-quality matter, not a blocked drain, and do not mean any particular flat has the same problem today. By design, though, if hollow spots or cracks sit right around the floor-drain outlet, or the sealant at the edge of the outlet has aged, shower water can travel under the tiles, keeping the area damp and musty and even reaching the ceiling of the flat below. Tap the tiles around the outlet and listen for a hollow sound, and look for blackened grout or sealant coming away at the edge of the drain.
The sales brochure lists some units as open-kitchen units, fitted with a stainless-steel sink, an induction hob and a cooker hood. With no door between the kitchen and the living area, any sewer smell from the sink outlet, or the sour smell of fermenting grease in the branch pipe, spreads straight into the living and dining room and is noticed sooner than in a closed kitchen. By design, grease build-up in the trap under the sink, a water seal that has been pulled out, or a loose waste connection can all cause this. Keep cooking oil and food scraps out of the sink; if it drains slowly, gurgles or still smells after cleaning, the trap should be taken apart and cleaned, the connections checked and the grease in the branch pipe cleared.
The sales brochure shows that every kitchen has inlet and outlet connections for a washing machine, and flats came with a two-in-one washer-dryer, so the machine and the sink drain from the same space. By design, a washing machine discharges a large volume at once; if the shared branch pipe is already narrowed by grease, lint or detergent residue, water comes back up through the sink or a nearby outlet, sometimes with bubbles or a smell. Start by cleaning the machine's lint filter and drain-pump filter and making sure the drain hose is not kinked and is sealed where it enters the outlet. If the sink is slow in everyday use and much worse when the machine drains, the shared branch pipe is the likely cause and needs unblocking, not just drain cleaner.
When the developer assembled the site, six plots inside it could not be acquired, so The Reach ended up built around the village houses on them, and the estate has to keep three passages open for villagers (according to a report cited on Wikipedia). DSD records show that parts of Shap Pat Heung still have villages or areas without public sewerage, and the project to serve them is still at the planning and design stage. If a smell is strongest in the landscaped gardens, on a walkway or around the edge of the estate, and every outlet in your flat is odour-free after being topped up with water, it may not be your flat's drains at all. Under the DMC summary, the estate's sewers and drains are common areas, so report the location and time to the management office; if you suspect sewage is going into an open channel, report it to the Environmental Protection Department.
Photos or a short video on WhatsApp help us tell a single-fixture blockage from a shared-stack problem.
The Reach is at 11 Shap Pat Heung Road, Tai Tong, Yuen Long, developed jointly by Henderson Land and New World Development. Its 12 residential towers hold 2,580 flats; the estate was completed in October 2013 and handovers began in January 2014. In typical units the bathroom floors are finished in tiles and natural stone, some flats have open kitchens, and the washer-dryer sits in the kitchen. When a drain runs slowly, backs up or smells, first work out whether the problem is inside the flat (traps, branch pipes, the floor itself) or in the estate's shared sewers and drains, then decide whether to deal with it yourself, book a call-out or report it to the management office.
According to the 2015 sales brochure, The Reach's towers are numbered 1 to 13 but there is no Tower 4, so there are 12 in total. Each has 25 storeys including the ground floor, with residential floors numbered 1/F to 28/F and 4/F, 13/F, 14/F and 24/F omitted; in Tower 11 the 1/F is the residents' clubhouse and flats start on 2/F, and there is a basement car park on B1/F. Note that several other Hong Kong projects carry the Chinese name 尚悅 with a suffix — 尚悅．嶺, 尚悅．方 and 尚悅．天城 — and they are separate developments with their own drainage backgrounds, so do not confuse them with The Reach.
The brochure states that the exposed floors of typical bathrooms are finished in tiles and natural stone, with an enamel toilet, an enamel basin, a shower set in the shower cubicle and an enamelled cast-iron bathtub. Kitchens come in open and closed versions, each with a stainless-steel sink and a two-in-one washer-dryer, and every kitchen has inlet and outlet connections for a washing machine. The same document says the hot and cold water pipes are copper; that is the water-supply system, separate from the drains that carry away waste water and sewage, so a leaking water pipe is not a drain problem.
The sales brochure covers fittings and finishes only and does not list a bathroom floor drain, but typical flats have a shower cubicle with a shower set, so by design a floor drain is to be expected. Judging from its completion date, The Reach's drainage was designed before Buildings Department practice note APP-164, which applies to drainage plans submitted to the Building Authority for approval after 31 August 2021. Its floor-drain traps are therefore unlikely to have the arrangement that diverts basin, bath or shower water to top up the floor-drain seal, so little-used floor drains still depend on residents adding water. At about twelve years old, general pipe ageing is unlikely to be the first cause; the points more worth watching are the seal between the floor tiles and the drain outlet, grease in the sink trap, and the washing-machine drain connection.
Note: statements based on building age and type are general inferences, not findings for any particular flat.
A clear process from enquiry and assessment to an agreed scope of work
Tell us the drain problem and district and ask about available timing.
Confirm timing based on the district and schedule, then inspect the blockage or odour issue.
Explain the proposed approach, scope and price before agreed work begins.
Use suitable tools for the site conditions and agreed scope of work.
After the agreed work, test drainage and explain the observed result and any next steps.
PipeButler is an independent drain-service provider with no affiliation to the developer, owners' corporation, management company or Housing Department of the places above. Facts come from public sources checked on the dates shown; work on common drains or common parts follows the management office's and deed of mutual covenant's arrangements.
WhatsApp with the problem and district, and we will confirm available timing.