Blocked drain unblocking

Signs your drain is blocked

Most blocked drains give warning before they overflow. Look out for sinks and showers draining slowly, gurgling from the plughole when the toilet flushes, water pooling around an outside gully, or a manhole with water sitting just below the cover. If more than one fitting in the house is slow, the blockage is usually in the shared drain outside rather than a single pipe.

How we clear it

We start by lifting the nearest manhole to see which run is blocked and how far the water has backed up. Small blockages near the surface are cleared with drain rods. Anything further down the line, or anything that has built up over months (fat, wipes, silt, root growth), is cleared with our high-pressure jetter, which scours the full inside of the pipe instead of just punching a hole through the middle.

Before we leave, we run water through every connected fitting and check the manhole is flowing freely. If we find a problem that jetting can't fix, such as a cracked or collapsed pipe, we explain what we saw and quote it separately. We never start extra work without asking.

What it costs

We don't charge by the hour. After the £49 call-out, our engineer inspects the drain and gives you a fixed price on site, with no obligation to go ahead. If a big blockage or a full manhole takes longer than expected, the price doesn't change.

No manhole?

Plenty of newer and extended properties have no obvious access point. We can usually get in through a rodding eye, a gully, or the soil stack. If we need to investigate first, we'll tell you before we start.