M20 · 3 miles from base
Blocked Drains in Didsbury
Blocked drains, CCTV surveys and no-dig repairs across Didsbury and M20. A lot of these drains were laid for one household and now serve six — we will tell you whose pipe it is before anyone quotes you.
Usually the same day. Didsbury is about fifteen minutes from base.
Local knowledge
Drainage in Didsbury
Didsbury's drainage problem is not age on its own, it is how many people are now using it. West Didsbury and the roads off Palatine Road are large Victorian and Edwardian villas, and a great many of them have been divided into flats. The private drain underneath was sized and laid for a single household, and it is now taking half a dozen kitchens and half a dozen bathrooms. It silts, it greases up, and it blocks at a rate the original builder never allowed for.
The second half of that is ownership. A converted villa's run is shared, so it is nobody's in particular, which is why it goes unmaintained until it stops completely — and why the first anyone hears of it is usually the ground-floor flat. The older streets are also on the Victorian combined system, where foul and rainwater share a pipe. That is why some Didsbury properties only ever have trouble during heavy rain, and why the trouble arrives from below rather than from the gully outside.
What we do in Didsbury
If the same drain in your Didsbury property blocks two or three times a year, jetting is not the answer — the pipe itself is damaged. A camera survey will tell you which, and lining repairs it without digging.
Didsbury — common questions
The house is flats and the drain keeps blocking. Is it my responsibility?
On a converted villa it is almost never one flat's alone. The run below is shared, so the cost is normally shared too, and in practice that is a conversation with the freeholder or the managing agent rather than with your neighbour. What we can do is put a camera down and establish exactly where the blockage is and what caused it — which is the thing that settles the argument, because "it is under the front path and it is fat" is a fact and "it is probably flat 3" is not.
We are careful about what goes down the sink. Why does it still block with grease?
Because you are one of six kitchens on the pipe. A shared lateral in a converted villa only needs one household pouring fat down the sink to build a restriction, and the restriction then catches everything else that comes past it. Being careful helps and it does not protect you. On a house like this the answer is usually a proper jetting on a schedule rather than waiting for the next blockage, and it works out cheaper than the emergency call-outs it replaces.
Sewage comes up the shower tray in heavy rain. What is that?
That is the older combined system surcharging. On the Victorian streets foul and rainwater go down the same pipe, so a sustained downpour fills it, and the water finds the lowest opening in the property — which in a converted villa is very often a ground-floor or basement shower. It is not a blockage and jetting will not fix it. What we would look at is whether there is a non-return valve on the property and whether any rainwater has been connected in that should not have been.
Wondering whose drain it is, or what it costs? Both are answered here.
Blocked drain in Didsbury?
We cover M20 and the streets around them — 3 miles from base.