Blocked Drains and Tanks in Kent and East Sussex

Clear it before it backs up

A blockage between the property and the tank does not stay put. It backs up, and the first you usually know is a toilet that will not clear or a gully overflowing outside. The longer it sits the more likely it is to end up inside the house.

We clear blockages with high pressure jetting, which cuts through fat, silt, roots and the wipes that cause most of them. It is far quicker and far less destructive than digging.

Blocked drain or full tank

If every sink, shower and toilet in the house is slow at once, the tank may simply be full, and an empty is the answer rather than jetting. If it is one fixture or one run of pipe, it is more likely a local blockage. How to troubleshoot slow drains in rural properties and signs your cesspool is full help you tell the two apart before you ring.

What jetting involves

We feed a high pressure hose into the pipe from the nearest access point and work it along the run. The water breaks up the blockage and flushes it through to the tank, and it scours the pipe walls of the fat and silt that cause the next one. Most jobs need no digging at all, and where a run has no access point we will tell you before we start rather than after.

CCTV when it keeps coming back

If a drain blocks repeatedly, something structural is usually wrong. A collapsed section, a displaced joint, a root intrusion or a fall that was never right. CCTV inspection shows exactly what and exactly where, so you fix the cause instead of paying to clear the same run twice a year.

Your drains are yours to look after

On a property with a cesspool, septic tank or treatment plant, the pipework between the house and the tank belongs to the property, so there is no water company to call. That makes keeping it clear the owner's job, and a regular empty of the tank itself is part of it. A tank that is overdue pushes problems back up the pipes.

Gullies, soakaways and rainwater

Not every flooded drain is foul. Yard gullies and rainwater soakaways block with leaves and silt too, and a surface water drain that overflows into the foul system can fill a cesspool far faster than it should. We clear both, and we will tell you if rainwater is getting into a tank that should only be taking waste from the house.

What causes most of them

Wet wipes, even the ones sold as flushable. Cooking fat poured down the sink. Sanitary products. Tree and hedge roots finding an old clay joint. Keeping the first three out of the system prevents most blockages. What causes blocked drains and tanks and how to reduce the risk of blocked drains and tanks go into each one.

Blocked drains across both counties

We clear private drains right across Kent and East Sussex. Blocked drains in Ashford, blocked drains in New Romney and why drains block in East Sussex cover what we see in those places, from roots on the Weald clay to silt on the Marsh.