Emergency · London · 24/7

Emergency Drain Unblocking in London

When rods meet a hard stop, more force is the wrong answer, that's how a £150 clearance becomes a £2,000 excavation.

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

High-pressure jetting clears what rodding can't, and the camera tells us why it blocked at all.

Emergency drain unblocking in London: do this now, while you wait

Stop using waterEverything sent down now surfaces at the lowest gully.
Don't force rods past resistanceA hard stop can be a collapsed section; punching through makes it worse. Note where the resistance is instead.
Clear access to the manholesKnowing which covers lift, and having them reachable, saves the first twenty minutes of the visit.
Skip the chemicalsJetting through caustic standing water is hazardous, and most firms surcharge for it.

Why it happens in London

What causes emergency drain unblocking in London

01
Compacted grease
Years of washing-up fat sets like wax; rods punch a hole that closes in a week, jetting strips the pipe wall clean.
02
Root mats
Fine roots enter at joints and mat across the bore, jetting with a cutting head clears them, the survey shows the entry point.
03
Scale and silt
Long shallow runs silt up; descaling heads restore the full bore.
04
Structural defects
Bellies, displaced joints and fractures, clearing helps today, the camera tells you if it will be back.

What this means in London

Local conditions we work around

Jetting a Victorian clay drain is not the same job as jetting modern plastic, and in much of London that is exactly what is under the garden. Old clay runs have joints every couple of feet that roots have found, and pressure that clears a blockage can also open up a joint that was only just holding. We camera first and choose the pressure to suit what we can see, rather than putting maximum pressure down a pipe that is a century old on principle.

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.

Finchley Barnet Enfield Wembley Harrow Stratford Walthamstow Tottenham Watford St Albans Hemel Hempstead Borehamwood All London areas →

Straight answers

Emergency drain unblocking in London, your questions

Jetting or rodding, which do I need?

Rodding suits soft, recent blockages near an access point (£140–£240). Jetting suits grease, roots, scale and anything rodding has already failed on (£190 upward, quoted first). If we can clear it with rods, we don't sell you jetting.

Will jetting damage old pipes?

Used properly, no, pressure and head choice are matched to the pipe material and condition. It's considerably gentler than mechanical force on a fragile clay run.

Should I get the CCTV survey too?

If this is a repeat blockage, yes, a £165 survey that finds the defect usually costs less than the third clearance would have. One-off blockage with an obvious cause? Skip it.

Do you do soakaways and gullies?

Yes, external gullies, downpipe runs and soakaway feeds, all jettable on the same visit.

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.

Related emergencies

Blocked drain Overflowing toilet All emergencies →

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020 3674 8514

Or WhatsApp 07865 292684, photos help us bring the right parts