Everything people ring us to ask before they book, answered in full. If yours is not here, the phone is quicker than a form.
On modern estates the faults are mechanical rather than structural: construction debris, lost falls, crushed sections under later hardstanding. None of those show at the surface and none of them clear with rodding. A clean survey is cheap reassurance; a bad one is usually worth more than it cost.
No. Lifting a cover shows you the chamber, not the run. Everything between the chambers — which is where the pipe actually fails — stays unexamined until a camera goes down it.
Because jetting clears the symptom. A dip, an open joint or a crushed section refills at a predictable rate, so the interval shortens as the defect worsens. The camera tells you which of those it is and how much pipe is affected.
Regularly, in this part of Warrington. Plastic does not crack with age, but it deforms under load and it holds silt wherever the fall is wrong. Both are common on estates built quickly, and both look like a blockage from above.
Adjusters work from surveys of this kind as a matter of routine. What they need is graded defects, measured positions and footage. What they turn down is an opinion with no evidence behind it.
Then it is their repair, not yours and not your insurer's, and the report says so in terms you can forward. On the older WA5 streets that outcome is common enough to be worth checking before you claim.
Usually. We follow the surface water run from the gully to where it terminates, which is what tells you where it discharges. On post-1990 estates this is one of the commonest reasons for a trace.
Very much so. A crushed run under fresh block paving is the single most avoidable fault we find in Westbrook and Whittle Hall, and an hour of tracing beforehand costs a fraction of lifting the paving afterwards.
Often, yes. If the deformation is not too advanced the run can be reformed with a die and then lined, all through existing access points. Once it has collapsed or delaminated badly, excavation is the only route — which is the argument for surveying early.
Age is the first clue: roughly 1955 to 1978. The camera gives the certain answer. Repeated blockages in a house from that period, in Old Hall or the older streets of Great Sankey, are the classic presentation.
You can, and the run will clear. But the joint that admitted them is still open and still leaking, so they return — usually within two or three growing seasons. Cutting is the short answer, lining the section is the durable one.
The footage shows where the roots enter and from which direction, which is the only sensible basis for that conversation. Have it before you raise it, not after.
Since October 2011 most runs serving more than one property are United Utilities' responsibility. The section serving your house alone is still yours. The survey identifies precisely where one becomes the other.
They often do, and it makes sense — a single survey of the shared run tells everyone on it where they stand. We are happy to address the report to more than one household.
If you are building over or within three metres of a public sewer, yes — United Utilities has to approve it, and a survey establishing line, depth and condition is normally the first thing they ask to see.
Find out exactly where and how badly it is damaged first. If the deformation is moderate the run can often be lined through existing access points with nothing lifted — worth establishing before anyone talks about taking up a floor.
Because baiting removes the rats, not the route. As long as there is an opening in the drainage, the next ones use the same way in. A survey finds the opening — after that, sealing it is a small job.
We can tell you where they are getting out of the drain, which is nearly always the answer. From a broken run they travel through the ground and come up under floors, into cavities or into a garden. Close the pipe and the route closes with it.