Drain Repairs Nottingham

Blocked drains that keep coming back are the clearest sign of a structural fault. If the same drain has been cleared two or three times in a year, something underground is catching debris and it will not stop until the pipe is put right. Most drainage issues we are called to are symptoms, not causes.

What to look for

Slow drainage across several fittings at once points to the shared run rather than to one sink. Damp patches, sinking paving or an unexplained green stripe across the lawn suggest leaking pipes below ground. A persistent outdoor smell, or rats in the garden, often means there is an open break in the line.

What causes the damage

Roots find hairline cracks and open them up. Ground movement, heavy traffic over a shallow run, and clay pipes reaching the end of their life account for most of the rest. Blocked rainwater pipes and overflowing gullies add to the load by soaking the ground around a run. Fat and wipes will not break a drain on their own, but they find any defect and turn it into a blockage.

We do not price a repair until we know what is wrong. CCTV drain surveys put a camera through the line and show the condition of the pipe on screen, and we grade what we find using the industry-standard WRc classification so severity is recorded consistently. Our WRc reports give every defect a grade rather than a vague description.

Where the run is unmapped, drain tracing with a sonde and locator gives us the route and depth, and we can produce a drawn drainage plan from it. For drainage problems the camera cannot see, we use thermal imaging and acoustic leak detection. You get the footage and the report whether or not you go ahead with the work.

Drain relining is the one we use most. A resin liner is fed into the damaged section and cured in place, forming a new pipe inside the old one with a design life of around 50 years. Nothing is excavated, so drives, patios and mature planting stay where they are.

Patch lining does the same over a short defect, sealing a single crack or displaced joint without relining the whole run.

Excavation and replacement is still the right answer for collapsed drain repairs, or where the fall is wrong and no liner will correct it. When we dig, we reinstate the surface, water-test the new section, and handle waste removal with transfer notes for everything taken from site. New pipework is laid to Building Regulations Approved Document H.

High pressure drain jetting clears the line before any repair, and is often all that is needed for root ingress caught early. Water jetting uses water alone, so nothing goes into the ground.

This decides who pays, so it is worth checking before booking anything. Since 2011, most shared drains and lateral drains running beyond your boundary have been Severn Trent's responsibility. Pipework inside your boundary that serves only your property is yours to maintain.

If our survey shows the fault sits on a Severn Trent length, we will tell you and you can report it to them at no cost. We would rather lose the job than charge you for a repair that is not yours.

We are drainage specialists working throughout Nottingham and across Nottinghamshire, including Arnold, Hucknall, Mansfield, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Sutton-in-Ashfield and Ilkeston, and into Derby and Heanor. Our vans carry jetting equipment, CCTV kit and common repair parts, and our tanker services cover gully emptying and larger clearance work.

Alongside repairs, our drain services include drain unblocking, sink and toilet unblocking, drain cleaning and drain clearing, CCTV surveys, drain installations and gully clearance. Domestic drain services and commercial drain cleaning are both handled by the same engineers, and we run planned maintenance contracts on commercial drains. Our emergency drain service aims to reach you within the hour, and we meet that on the large majority of call-outs. Describe the symptoms and we will tell you which of our drain cleaning services you need.