It’s common for the drainage pipes which leave your home to get no maintenance whatsoever during the course of their life. That is until things start to go wrong.

A drainage problem will often strike with little warning whatsoever, leaving a homeowner in an unhygienic mess. A backflowing toilet or a drain which has become blocked can lead to sewage seeping up into a homeowner’s garden and causing a considerable amount of damage. Sometimes a homeowner may notice things aren’t what they should be before this happens and this is when it’s time to react.

When the water level in your toilet drops much lower than it used to, or when you notice that a sink is taking longer to drain than it should, it’s time to call in the drainage professionals to help out. If you leave a problem there is a good chance that it will only get worse, resulting in a scenario such as the one above, where waste will enter your home.

Drain cleaning companies in London have all the equipment needed to solve blocked drains. And in most cases all’s that is needed is to jet the drain with high pressure water to remove the blockage. This can take just a matter of minutes, but it can save you a huge amount of otherwise costly and unhygienic mess.

Perhaps the most common reason for a drain blockage in the city of London is the liquid fat that is deposited down the drains by unwitting homeowners and commercial property owners who do not realise the damage that can be caused.

Many people still carry out the practice of disposing of liquid fat down their drains. And this can not only be a long-term problem, it can also be a problem which causes heartache in the short term too.

When fat is disposed of down the drain it can quickly cool and solidify into a mass of immovable gunk. This mass is then a sticky haven for anything else which is disposed of down the drain, so blockages quickly follow.

Every year thousands are spent by water companies who try to educate people on what can and what can’t be put down drain, but unfortunately the practice continues.

Drainage engineers in London luckily have a few tricks up their sleeves to solve drainage problems caused by fat. And their best tool in their arsenal to solve fat-bergs is called high pressure water jetting.

In the pressure jetting process the team of drainage engineers direct a stream of water down the drain, which blasts the fat from the insides of the drainage pipes. This fat can either then be washed through the system or retrieved via the nearest manhole cover.

Drainage problems in London are becoming common as the city’s sewers struggle to cope with an increasing population and an aging sewer system.

London’s sewers were built by the Victorians over a century ago, but since then the population explosion the city has seen has meant that the sewers are increasingly overworked.

In some districts in London only 2mm of rainfall is needed before the sewers fail to cope and discharge sewage into the River Thames. This is why Thames Water is investing millions into the construction of a super-sewer under the city, which will take the waste water to sewage treatment works.

But it’s not just in the city centre where residents face issues. The smaller drainage pipes that lead away from people’s homes are also a likely point of failure. And when these pipes do become blocked the result is a rather smelly, messy problem, which needs to be attended to by professional drain cleaners in London.

Drain cleaners in London have all the latest technology at their disposal such as powerful jetting equipment, which can remove the clogs which are the common source of the blockage. Many drain cleaning companies in London also offer other services besides cleaning, such as root removal and drainage repair, so you can always rely on them should a problem occur.

Drainage teams across the country are always looking for new ways to combat the fat that clogs and blocks our drains and sewers. Recently fat-busting bacteria have been employed to ‘eat’ the fat under the city of York, and the trials conducted seem to have been a success. However we wouldn’t have to come up with new ways to remove the fat if residents didn’t keep putting it into the drainage system in the first place.

One of the common reasons for a drain blockage in London is the accumulation of fat in the drainage pipe that leaves your home or in the sewer in the road adjacent to your house. The fat accumulates because when cold it sticks to the insides of the pipe and isn’t removed by the general flow of waste water. The fat provides a haven for other debris and hence the chances of a blockage occurring in a fat laden pipe are greatly increased.

Instead of disposing of liquid fat down the sink homeowners should wait until the fat has cooled and then dispose of it in the general waste. Until the disposal of fat is done this way in every home in the UK drainage engineers will have to rely on drain jetting and the manual method of removing fat to keep our drains flowing.

One of the most common reasons for blocked drainage is roots. Roots find their way into the drainage system through tiny cracks in drainage pipes. Over time they grow larger and can eventually block the path of waste water.

When a drainage company come to fix your blocked drain they may first try to jet the blockage away using a high pressure jet of water. When it becomes evident that this will not shift the clog, further investigation commonly results in them finding a degree of root growth.

Roots found in a drainage system can be cut away without the need for excavation. A spinning mechanical root cutter is inserted into the drainage pipe, which cuts the roots back to the internal dimensions of the drain. A liner can then be inserted into the drain to stop the roots growing back.

It’s common for drains in London to become infiltrated with roots, but if you find the right drainage contractor, the roots can be removed and the drain can be put back to its original condition with the minimum of fuss.