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Blocked Drain in London? Cleared Today, Fixed Price

One slow sink is a nuisance.

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Blocked drain in London
No call-out feeNo night or weekend surchargeFixed price before we start12-month workmanship guarantee

A gully overflowing across the yard, or several fixtures backing up at once, means the shared run is blocked, and every flush is now adding to the problem. We rod, jet and survey on the same visit.

Blocked drain in London: do this now, while you wait

  1. Stop adding waterNo washing machine, no dishwasher, minimal flushing. Everything you send down now comes up somewhere lower.
  2. Lift the gully grid if it's surface-blockedLeaves and silt on the grid itself cause a surprising share of “blocked drains”, two minutes with gloves solves those.
  3. Don't pour caustic chemicalsCaustic soda in standing water makes a hot chemical pond an engineer then has to work through, and most firms charge extra once chemicals are involved.
  4. Note what backs up whenWhich fixture, how fast, does it gurgle elsewhere, the pattern tells us where in the run the blockage sits before we arrive.
Why it happens in London

What causes blocked drain in London

  • 01
    Fat, oil and grease

    Cools and sets in the run like candle wax, narrowing the pipe until wipes finish the job.

  • 02
    Wipes and “flushables”

    Nothing labelled flushable is flushable. They mat together around any snag and build a plug.

  • 03
    Roots and joints

    Tree roots find the joints in older clay runs, common across London's Victorian drainage.

  • 04
    Collapsed or scaled sections

    A recurring blockage in the same place is a pipe problem, not a habit problem, that's what the camera is for.

What this means in London

Local conditions we work around

Much of London still drains through Victorian combined sewers carrying foul and surface water in one pipe, and that produces two very different jobs. Root intrusion into old clay joints under gardens and pavements is the classic slow blockage our cameras find. The other is not a blockage at all: in heavy rain the system surcharges and pushes water back up through the lowest gully on the property, which is why some basements flood in a storm with a perfectly clear drain. Telling those apart decides whether jetting will help.

Where we do this in London

Covered across London

Same published rate card and the same twelve-month workmanship guarantee everywhere below, there is no postcode loading. Each area has its own page with an arrival time taken from our job records rather than chosen for a website.

FulhamKensingtonChelseaChiswickEalingHammersmithIslingtonCamdenClaphamWandsworthNotting HillPutney All London areas →
Straight answers

Blocked drain in London, your questions

Is the blocked drain mine or the water company's?
Since 2011, shared drains beyond your property boundary generally belong to the water company, their problem, their cost. We tell you honestly when a blockage is theirs and how to report it, rather than charging you for it.
What does drain unblocking cost in London?
A straightforward outside blockage cleared by rodding is £140–£240 fixed. Jetting for grease-packed or long runs is quoted before it starts. No call-out fee.
Why does the same drain keep blocking?
Recurring blockages in the same spot mean a defect, a dropped joint, root intrusion, scale, or a belly in the run. A CCTV survey (£165 with report) finds it, and often pays for itself by ending the cycle of clearances.
Can you come today?
Emergency drain calls run on the same footing as leaks: our London average is 52 minutes, honestly quoted per postcode when you call.
Does London water make this more likely?
Frequently, yes. London runs 280 to 320 ppm off the chalk aquifer, and scale is the quiet cause behind a large share of the emergencies we attend, it narrows pipework, coats heat exchangers until a boiler overheats and locks out, and seizes the stopcock on the one night you need it to turn. Add pipework that in much of the city was last touched in the 1960s and the failures cluster in ways we can often predict from the postcode.
24 hours · 365 days · London

Water where it
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