HERTFORDSHIRE, BEDFORDSHIRE & CAMBRIDGESHIRE
Blocked Drains in Barnet
Blocked drains in Barnet cleared with high pressure jetting, day or night, with a CCTV survey if it keeps coming back. No call-out fee in working hours.
Blocked drains in Barnet, from the top of the hill at Chipping Barnet to the low ground at Hendon, cleared with a price you hear on the phone rather than discover on the invoice. A toilet in Whetstone that rises instead of falls, a chamber in an Arkley garden that has been weeping for a month, a gully in a Finchley side return that turns the patio into a pond every time it rains. Ring 01462 506 374, tell us the postcode and what you can see, and we will tell you when the van can be there.
The hill changes the job
Barnet’s drainage has a geography of its own. The High Street at Chipping Barnet stands 427 feet above sea level, Totteridge and Mill Hill run along ridges of their own, and everything falls away to the Dollis Brook, the Folly Brook, the Mutton Brook and the Silk Stream on their way to the Brent. On the hill the falls are steep, water moves fast and the pipes mostly stay clean, until a joint drops and the fast water scours the ground out from underneath it. In the valleys the opposite happens: gentle gradients, sluggish flow, silt and fat settling where the pipe flattens out at the bottom of a garden. A drain engineer who works Barnet learns to ask the postcode before asking the symptom, because a blocked drain in Arkley and a blocked drain beside the Dollis Brook are seldom the same fault.
Get a fixed price before we start
Call and talk to an engineer, or send us the details and we will come back to you with a price.
Whose pipe you are ringing about
Two water companies supply Barnet’s taps, Affinity Water across the north of the borough and Thames Water across the south, but Affinity is a supply only company, and Thames Water is the sewerage undertaker for the whole of Barnet. Since October 2011 that has mattered to householders in a way it did not before, because the shared sewers behind terraces and semis, and the lateral drains beyond the property line, moved from private ownership to Thames Water’s. A blocked run that four houses share is very likely theirs to clear without charge. The pipe inside your boundary serving only your house is still yours, and that is the pipe we come to. We know which we are looking at as soon as we have a lid up, and we say so before doing anything that costs money.
The runs that block, house by house
The ridge house on a long plot. Totteridge Lane, Arkley, Monken Hadley, Hadley Green. A private drain can run the full length of a hundred foot garden through London Clay, under a cedar or a line of limes, before it meets anything Thames Water owns. London Clay shrinks in a dry summer, especially where roots are pulling the water out, and swells when the rain comes back, and broken drains are among the damage the geologists attribute to it. That long run is where we find bellies, dropped joints and root masses, and a camera is the only honest way to know which.
The Victorian terrace at the station. The railway reached High Barnet in 1872 and brought Station Road at New Barnet, Wood Street, and the terraces of East Finchley and Cricklewood with it. The original clay pipes are still under most of them, laid two feet at a time with a collar at every length. Each collar is a place for a root, and the pipes were laid to falls that a century of settlement has flattened.
The 1930s semi in the valley. Whetstone, East Barnet, Friern Barnet, Mill Hill, Finchley, Hendon. The drain runs to the rear, usually shared with next door, sometimes with three or four houses, joining a back run that passed to Thames Water in 2011. Sorting out which cover belongs to which house takes the first ten minutes of every one of these visits.
The cottage estate. The Watling Estate at Burnt Oak, built between the wars and now a conservation area, and the 1920s and 1930s council housing across Colindale and Edgware. Similar long shared runs, similar clay, and gardens that have been paved since without any thought for where the rain goes.
The flat. Grahame Park, the blocks around Brent Cross and along the High Road at North Finchley, the conversions in Golders Green. Stacks and communal drains where a blockage on the second floor arrives in the ground floor bath, and where the managing agent owns the problem as often as the resident. We can usually tell you which from the description.
The Suburb. Hampstead Garden Suburb is a conservation area under its own Trust, with listed buildings throughout, and digging a trench across a lawn there is a last resort in every sense. Relining from inside the pipe, which needs nothing more than access at a chamber, is how repairs are done in the Suburb, and it is how we do them.
Cutting roots on the ridge
Roots are the Barnet blockage. Barnet is a borough of long gardens and old trees, and the fine roots that find a joint in a clay pipe grow into a mat that catches every wipe and every scrap of fat until the pipe is a solid plug. Rods go through a root mass and the blockage is back within weeks. What works is a cutter head on the jetter, which shears the roots off flush with the pipe wall, followed by the camera to see whether the joint they came through is a patch job or a liner job. Left alone, roots that have found a joint will eventually push it apart, and the repair then is a dug one.
Rain, brooks and the Welsh Harp
A good deal of what floods a Barnet garden is rainwater with nowhere to go. The four brooks drain the whole borough down to the Brent and the Welsh Harp reservoir, and the low ground beside them, along the Dollis Valley, around Hendon and by the Silk Stream at Colindale, is where surface water backs up in a storm. A gully choked with leaves, a soakaway dug in 1935 and full of silt, a driveway paved edge to edge with the water directed at the house: each looks like a blocked drain and none of them is a foul drain at all. We clear gullies, channels and soakaways, and we say plainly when a soakaway on clay near the brook will never drain and the answer is a piped connection to the surface water system.
The visit
A few questions on the phone settle more than you would think: which fixtures are affected, whether next door has the same trouble, whether the garden is wet. On site the covers come up, the flow direction and the ownership are established, and the blockage is cleared with the tool it needs, rods for a simple obstruction close to a chamber, the jetter for grease and silt, the cutter for roots. If the same run has blocked before, the camera goes in straight after the clear, with the run empty and visible, and the fault is on the screen before we pack up. Nobody should pay for the same clear three times without being told why it keeps happening.
The money
You are quoted for a normal clear through a reachable chamber on the phone, and that quote holds. Anything beyond it, jetting from a second chamber, cutting roots, a survey afterwards, is priced as its own line and agreed before it starts. Where the fault turns out to be on Thames Water’s side we say so and you ring them, because clearing their sewer at your expense is not a service.
Cleared properly, day or night
Jetting on the van, a camera when it keeps coming back, and a written report you can hand to your insurer.
Nights, weekends and Christmas
Sewage rising in a downstairs shower at midnight, a toilet that will not clear with guests in the house, a chamber lid lifting in a storm in the Dollis Valley. The line is answered whatever the hour, the van carries a jetter and not just rods, and what we are there to do at night is get the drain running and the house safe. A liner, a rebuilt chamber or a full survey waits for daylight, at a price agreed before we leave.
CCTV drain surveys in Barnet, and who asks for them
A camera survey records the inside of the run and produces a report locating every defect by distance from the chamber. In Barnet the people asking for them are buyers of the big houses on the ridge and the Victorian terraces at the stations, householders whose blockage is back for the third time, and owners whose insurer wants to know whether a cracked drain is behind movement in the house. That last question has real weight on London Clay, where a cracked drain that has been wetting the clay beneath a footing is a textbook cause of subsidence, and a dated survey is the evidence either way.
Reline or dig
A crack, a dropped joint or root damage found by the camera is repaired from inside the pipe in nearly every case: a resin patch for a single bad joint, a cured in place liner for a longer stretch, both fitted through the existing chamber with no trench. Excavation is kept for a collapsed pipe that has lost its shape. You are told which of the three applies, not sold the dearest.
Drain unblocking and drain cleaning in Barnet
Drain unblocking in Barnet is usually same day if you ring before midday, with the jetter and the cutter on the van because roots are the commonest cause here. Drain cleaning in Barnet is the job to book before the blockage: a jet through the long private run of a Totteridge or Arkley plot, or a kitchen line in a Whetstone semi that has been slowing for months. A fixed price for either, and a straight answer on whether the run is yours or Thames Water’s.
Related work in Barnet
A single basin or bath draining slowly is a waste pipe or a trap, which is plumbing in Barnet. Damp under a floor with no drain anywhere near it is a job for leak detection. New soil and waste routes for a refit are designed inside the bathroom renovation project.
Frequently asked questions
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12 months on repairs, installations and everything else. Two years on a full bathroom refit. If anything we did develops a fault, we come back and put it right.
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The price is agreed with you before any work begins. No hidden extras on the invoice.
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The emergency line is answered every day of the year by someone who can send an engineer, not a call centre.
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Five vans carrying the parts that fail most often, so most jobs are fixed on the first visit.
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An established local business with multiple engineers and a dedicated office team to keep you informed.
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Frequently asked questions
How soon can you be in Barnet?
Same day for most calls made before midday, and at any hour for sewage coming into the house.
Is the blocked drain mine or Thames Water’s?
Yours where it lies within your boundary and serves your house alone. Thames Water’s where it is shared or beyond the boundary, since 2011. Two water companies supply the borough but Thames Water takes it all away.
Why does my drain block every few months?
Roots, most often in Barnet. Failing that, a displaced collar, a low spot where the clay has settled, or grease that rods pushed along rather than cleared. The camera settles it.
Will you dig up the garden?
Rarely. Patches and liners go in from inside the pipe, which is also how we work in Hampstead Garden Suburb and the conservation areas.
Should I have the drains surveyed before buying in Totteridge or Arkley?
Yes. Long private runs, clay pipes, clay ground, big trees. A survey costs little against a collapsed run found after completion.
Is this a drain or a plumbing job?
More than one fixture affected, or water outside, is the drain. One slow basin is the trap. Describe it and the right engineer comes.
Who is responsible for a blocked drain or sewer?
Since October 2011 the water company owns the shared sewers and the lateral drain beyond your property boundary, and you own the private drains inside your boundary that serve only your home. If the blockage is in a shared pipe you can report it to Thames Water or Anglian Water for free. If it is on your side, that is where we come in, and a CCTV survey shows exactly which it is.
How much does a CCTV drain survey cost in Barnet?
CCTV drain surveys start from £180. The price depends on the length and access of the drain run, and you get the recording, a plan of the run and a written report you can pass to a buyer, an insurer or a solicitor.
Do you charge a call-out fee for blocked drains in Barnet?
Not between 8am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Outside those hours there is a £50 + VAT call-out on top of the out-of-hours rate, and we tell you the cost on the phone before anyone sets off. Every rate is listed in full on our prices page.
What causes drains to block?
Inside the house it is nearly always fat, grease and wipes. Outside it is tree roots, collapsed or displaced clay sections on older properties, and silt from surface water. Repeated blockages in the same place are a sign the pipe itself is damaged, which is why we survey rather than just clear a drain that keeps coming back.
Areas we cover for blocked drains around Barnet
Drain unblocking across the borough: High Barnet, Chipping Barnet, New Barnet, East Barnet, Monken Hadley, Hadley Wood, Arkley, Cockfosters, Totteridge, Whetstone, Oakleigh Park, Friern Barnet, Mill Hill, Edgware, Burnt Oak, Colindale, Hendon, Finchley, North Finchley, East Finchley, Golders Green and Hampstead Garden Suburb, EN4, EN5, N2, N3, N11, N12, N20, NW4, NW7, NW11 and HA8, plus Potters Bar and Borehamwood.
Related services
Blockages, CCTV and repairs
Cleared the same day
Kitchen, bathroom and outside
Recorded and reported
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Every rate, published