SK6 · 6 miles from base
Blocked Drains in Marple
Blocked drains, surveys and no-dig repairs in Marple, Marple Bridge and the surrounding SK6 lanes. Older property, steeper ground, and drainage that behaves differently because of it.
Same day in most cases — allow a little longer than the closer towns.
Local knowledge
Drainage in Marple
Marple sits on the side of the Goyt valley and the ground falls hard towards the river, and every drainage quirk here comes back to that. Steep falls mean water moves fast and solids do not always go with it — a run that is too steep scours the liquid away and leaves the rest behind, which is why some Marple drains block at the bottom of a run rather than the top.
The housing is older on average than the rest of the borough, with a good deal of stone-built and pre-1900 stock, and the drainage under it is correspondingly old: clay, shallow, and laid before anyone was recording where it went. Out towards Mellor and the lanes there are also properties still on private systems and soakaways rather than mains drainage, which is a different job altogether. When we survey in Marple we will normally produce a drain plan as well as the footage, because on a lot of these properties nobody actually knows where the pipes run.
Case study
A job in Marple
- The problem
- A stone-built Victorian property with a drain that backed up every time there was sustained heavy rain, and behaved perfectly the rest of the year.
- What the camera found
- Camera and dye tracing showed a rainwater downpipe had been connected into the foul run at some point in the past — probably decades ago. In normal weather the foul run coped. In a downpour it was taking the roof as well and simply ran out of capacity.
- The fix
- Disconnected the downpipe from the foul line and reconnected it into the surface water system, and cleared the silt that had built up behind the surcharge. No pipework needed replacing at all — the problem was never a broken drain.
What we do in Marple
If the same drain in your Marple 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.
Marple — common questions
Do you produce a drain plan?
Yes, and on Marple properties it is often the most useful part of the survey. A lot of the older housing here has drainage nobody has a record of. You get the footage, a written report and a plan of where the runs actually go.
My drain only floods when it rains heavily. Is that a blockage?
Often it is not. It is usually either surface water getting into the foul system where it should not be, or a run that has silted up and lost capacity. Both are common around here. A camera survey will tell you which, and the fix is frequently cheaper than a repair.
Who is responsible for the drain — me or United Utilities?
Roughly: the pipework inside your boundary that only serves your property is yours. Once it joins a pipe shared with a neighbour, or crosses your boundary, it is almost always United Utilities' — that changed in 2011 and a lot of people in Marple still do not know it. If we find the blockage is on their side we will tell you, and you should not be paying us to clear it.
Blocked drain in Marple?
We cover SK6 and the streets around them — 6 miles from base.