0800 772 33 99 — we cover WS10 from our base in Castlecroft, Wolverhampton.

Two things, both from the same van: clearing a drain that has blocked, and putting a camera down one to find out why.

What we do in Darlaston

Blocked drains — cleared with high-pressure jetting rather than rods. Drain unblocking

CCTV drain surveys — graded, MSCC-coded, site plan and full video, report back the same day by NADC-certified surveyors. CCTV drain surveys

No repairs, no excavation — so no reason to find work that isn’t there.

Why people here ask for a survey

Commercial and industrial drainage. Yard drainage, interceptors and surface water systems are often altered over the years without anyone recording it.

Settling who owns what. Shared drainage produces a great many arguments about who pays. A recorded survey turns opinion into evidence.

All the reasons a CCTV survey gets commissioned

Why drains fail in Darlaston

A drain fails because of what is around it, not just what goes down it. Three things account for most of what we log locally.

Housing and trading estate on infilled ground. A good deal of what is now housing and trading estate sits on former works sites. Drainage laid across infilled ground keeps settling long after the surface has stopped looking new.

Shallow coal underneath as well. The same seams worked across Wednesbury and Willenhall run under Darlaston, giving a second source of ground movement and a second reason for stepped joints.

Post-war rebuilding. Much of the older housing was cleared and replaced through the 1960s and 70s, which means a good deal of pitch fibre – the pipe that goes oval instead of cracking.

None of that is visible from the surface, which is why a camera settles in an hour what guesswork will not settle at all.

Who pays

Shared runs are common across the estates, and anything shared or beyond your boundary has been Severn Trent’s since 2011.

Areas we cover

Bentley, Darlaston, Fallings Heath, Kings Hill and Moxley — WS10.

Tree roots and Darlaston drainage

Bentley and Darlaston are a fair sample of Darlaston drainage, and what follows is what we find across WS10.

CCTV view inside a drain showing a dense mass of tree roots entering the pipe and partly blocking the bore

Roots do not break into a sound pipe. The guide printed in the back of our own survey reports puts it plainly: roots normally infiltrate via bad joints, cracks, fractures and breaks. The defect comes first and the root exploits it.

What a root is looking for is water, and a drain leaking at a joint into dry summer soil is an obvious source. A hair root finds the gap, and once inside – in a constant supply of exactly what it wants – it thickens. The root that got in through a two millimetre gap becomes a twenty millimetre root and levers the joint further apart.

Inside the pipe it behaves like a net. Water passes through it. Paper, fat and solids do not. From the house everything seems fine until the day it is not.

Before you build over a drain

In Darlaston – WS10 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Bentley and Darlaston.

Extensions and garden rooms in Darlaston frequently sit over a shared lateral, and Severn Trent will want position, depth and condition before agreeing a build-over.

There is a second reason to survey first, and it is worth as much as the first: a dated, coded record of the pipe’s condition before your works began ends any later argument about whether the build damaged it.

Getting to you

Darlaston covers a fair spread of housing, from Bentley, Darlaston, Fallings Heath, and this applies to most of it.

We work out of Castlecroft in Wolverhampton, and Darlaston is close enough that the constraint on timing is the diary rather than the drive.

Ring and we will give you a straight answer on when, and a price before we set off.

The report, and what is in it

In Darlaston – WS10 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Bentley and Darlaston.

Written to be handed to somebody else – a solicitor, an insurer, a water authority – rather than just read once.

Each section carries a DRB grade and each observation a position in metres and a still image. Our reporting software is WRc-approved and MSCC-compliant, which matters when the report has to satisfy a third party rather than only you.

What it does not contain is a recommendations section quoting for work. We do not carry out repairs, relining or excavation, so we have nothing to sell on the back of what the camera finds. The report sets out what is there and how bad it is; what to do about it is for you and whoever does the work.

Common questions

The drainage was replaced when the estate was built — does it still need surveying? Often more than the Victorian stock. 1960s-70s replacement usually means pitch fibre, which has a shorter life than the clay it replaced.