Croydon & the CR postcodes
Blocked drains and blocked toilets in Croydon
We clear blocked toilets, sinks, baths, showers and outside gullies across Croydon and the surrounding CR postcodes. There is no published price for drainage work, because a trap you can clear in twenty minutes and a rooted run under a garden are not the same job, so we look first, tell you what is causing it and what clearing it will cost, and you decide from there. If the blockage turns out to sit in a length of pipe Thames Water is responsible for, we will tell you that instead, and it costs you nothing to be told.
What you get
What the job includes
- Clearing blocked toilets, basins, baths, showers, kitchen sinks and outside gullies, whether the blockage sits in the trap, the branch or the underground run
- Lifting and rodding through the inspection chambers, including the interceptor traps fitted at the boundary of most Victorian and Edwardian Croydon terraces
- High-pressure water jetting for fat, scale and root mass that rodding will not shift, with the jet head sized to the pipe rather than forced down it
- A CCTV camera survey of the run once it is flowing again, so you can see for yourself what caused it and whether the pipe itself is damaged
- Root cutting where a joint has been penetrated, and a straight view on whether cutting will hold for a season or the section needs patching or relining
- Establishing where your drain actually runs and who owns each length of it, so you are not paying to clear pipe that transferred to Thames Water in 2011
- A written note of what we found, which is what an insurer, a freeholder or a managing agent will ask for if the problem turns out to be someone else’s
- Making good afterwards: the chamber flushed through, covers reseated properly, and the area left clean rather than hosed off and left wet
Local knowledge
Who actually owns the drain under a Croydon terrace
In October 2011 the private sewers and lateral drains serving more than one property in England and Wales transferred to the water companies. In Croydon that means Thames Water, and it matters more here than in a lot of boroughs. Most of the housing north of the town centre is Victorian and Edwardian terrace. Thornton Heath, Selhurst, South Norwood, Addiscombe and West Croydon were built as continuous rows, and those rows almost always share one drainage run along the back gardens, collecting four, six, sometimes a dozen houses before it reaches the sewer under the road. Since 2011 that shared length belongs to Thames Water, and so does the lateral drain carrying your waste from your boundary out to the sewer. What is left as yours is the part inside your boundary that serves only your house: the pan, the soil stack, the gully, the branch and the chamber in your own garden.
The practical version is short. If the blockage is in the shared run, Thames Water will clear it and will not charge you, and their clearance line runs 24 hours on 0800 316 9800. If it is in your own branch, it is yours to deal with. The test is which chambers are full: if the chamber in your garden is running clear and the one three doors down is surcharged, it is not your blockage and no honest engineer should let you pay for it. Croydon Council is the third number people ring by mistake. The council looks after highway drainage and the gullies in the road, not the pipe under your garden. We lift the covers and check before we quote anything, and if the answer is Thames Water we will tell you and leave you to make a free phone call.
Two things make blockages here come back. North of the town centre the ground is London Clay, which shrinks through a dry summer and swells again over winter. The short salt-glazed clay pipe sections used in Victorian drainage move with it and the mortar joints open, and roots from the street limes and planes, and from the sycamores in the back gardens, find those joints and grow into them. The second is the interceptor trap. Most terraces of that age still have one in the boundary chamber, a U-bend with a stopper above it, fitted to keep sewer gas out of the house drain. It catches wipes and fat beautifully. In a great many Croydon properties the stopper fell into the trap decades ago and has been sitting in it collecting everything since. It is the most common single cause of a terrace backing up here, and there is no plunger and no bottle of drain cleaner that will ever reach it.
How it goes
What happens, step by step
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You tell us what is backing up
Whether it is one fitting or several changes the job completely. A single slow basin is usually its own trap or branch. A toilet, a bath and a kitchen sink all backing up together means the blockage is underground and downstream of all of them, which needs different kit and a different conversation. Two minutes on the phone tells us which van load to bring.
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We lift the chambers before anything else
Nothing goes down a pipe until we have taken the inspection covers off and looked. Which chambers are surcharged and which are running clear places the blockage within a metre or two, and tells us whether it sits inside your boundary or in a length that belongs to Thames Water. It takes ten minutes and it is the step that saves people money.
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We give you the price before we start
Drainage is the one job we do not publish a figure for, because the honest range is too wide to put on a page. Once we have looked in the chambers we know what we are dealing with, and we give you a price for clearing it. That price does not move unless we find something structural, and if we do we stop and agree it with you first.
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Clearing the blockage
Rods first wherever rods will do it, because they are kinder to hundred-year-old clay pipe than anything else. Jetting where rods will not, with the head matched to the pipe bore. Root cutting where a joint has been penetrated. On an interceptor trap it usually means going in through the rodding eye and clearing the trap by hand as well as by rod, because the stopper is normally sitting in the bottom of it.
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A camera down the run
On any drain that has blocked more than once, or where the blockage was underground, we put a camera through once it is flowing. It shows whether the pipe is sound or whether you have a displaced joint, a root mass, a collapsed section, or an old pitch fibre pipe from a post-war build that has gone oval. You watch the screen while we are there rather than getting a verdict afterwards.
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What to do next, put plainly
Often the answer is nothing at all beyond keeping fat and wipes out of it. Sometimes it is a repair, a patch liner or a section dug and replaced, and we will price that separately so you can think about it. If the fault is in Thames Water’s length we say so and stop. If it is a shared run serving converted flats, we put what we found in writing for the freeholder or the managing agent.
Before you ring
Questions we get asked
Who is responsible for a blocked drain, me or Thames Water?
If the blocked length serves only your property and sits inside your boundary, it is yours. If it is shared with a neighbour, or it is the lateral drain running from your boundary out to the sewer in the road, it transferred to Thames Water in October 2011 and they will clear it at no charge to you. The quickest way to tell which you have is to lift the inspection chambers and see which ones are surcharged, which is the first thing we do and something we do before quoting.
My neighbour’s drain is backing up as well as mine. What does that mean?
It means the blockage is almost certainly in the shared run behind the houses, downstream of both of you, and in a Croydon terrace that run is Thames Water’s responsibility. Ring them rather than paying anybody, us included. If they attend and find it is in your own branch after all, you have lost an hour and nothing else.
Should I ring Croydon Council about a blocked drain?
Only if water is standing in the road or the gully in the pavement outside is blocked. The council is responsible for highway drainage and road gullies. The sewers and shared drains serving houses are Thames Water’s, and the pipework inside your own boundary serving only your house is yours.
How much does it cost to unblock a drain?
We do not publish a price for drainage, because clearing a kitchen trap and jetting a rooted run under a garden are not comparable jobs and a single headline figure would be misleading. We look in the chambers, give you a figure, and you decide before any work starts. If you need us out of hours the emergency call-out is £120, which covers getting to you and finding the fault, and clearing it is quoted on top once we know what it is.
What causes most blocked drains around Croydon?
In the older terraces it is the interceptor trap at the boundary chamber, very often with a fallen stopper sitting in it gathering wipes and fat. After that it is tree roots at open joints in salt-glazed clay pipe, helped along by the shrink and swell of the London Clay across the north of the borough. In converted flats it is almost always wipes, cooking fat and cat litter from two or three kitchens and bathrooms sharing one 100mm run.
If you cut the roots out, will they grow back?
Yes, to the same joint, because the joint is still open and still leaking water into the soil, which is what drew the roots there in the first place. Cutting typically buys you a year or two of clear running. If you want it to stop, that section needs patching or relining, and a camera survey tells us which joints are actually at fault so you are not paying to line a whole run that does not need it.
Does home insurance cover blocked drains?
Buildings insurance will often cover damage caused by a drain collapsing or by an escape of water, and some policies carry a drainage or home emergency add-on that pays for clearance itself. Routine unblocking caused by fat or wipes is usually excluded as maintenance. We give you a written note of what we found and the camera footage where we have taken it, which is what an insurer will ask to see.
Who owns the manhole in my garden?
The chamber and its cover are part of your property and are yours to maintain. What runs through it may not be. If the pipe passing through that chamber also carries waste from other houses, that pipe is Thames Water’s even though the chamber sits in your garden, and clearing a blockage in it is not something you should be paying for.
Can I try a chemical drain unblocker first?
On a slow basin or shower trap it sometimes works. On anything underground it will not, because the product sits in the standing water and dilutes long before it reaches the blockage. Caustic products can also damage old pitch fibre pipe and perish the seals on plastic waste fittings, which turns a blockage into a leak. If a toilet or an outside gully is backing up, leave it alone and get the chambers lifted.
There is a drain smell in the garden but nothing is blocked. What is that?
Usually a trap that has dried out, or an interceptor trap that has been broken through or bypassed, letting sewer air back up through a chamber or a gully. It can also be a cracked chamber or a rodding eye left open. It is worth tracing rather than living with, because the same opening that lets the air out is the one that lets rats in.
Do you deal with drains for flats and rented property?
Yes. A large number of Croydon terraces are now two or three flats sharing a single 100mm run, which is a good part of why they block. We are happy to deal directly with a managing agent or a freeholder, and to set out in writing what we found and where the responsibility sits between the leaseholders, the freeholder and Thames Water.
How quickly can you get to me?
We work Monday to Saturday, 7am to 8pm, with emergency cover around the clock. A toilet that will not flush in a house with one bathroom is treated as urgent rather than booked in for next week. If you ring during working hours we can usually get to you the same day anywhere in Croydon and the CR postcodes.
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Ring us, or send the form and we come back with a price.