0800 772 33 99 — we cover ST19 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.
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What we do in Penkridge
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
A new-build handover or warranty question. Drainage laid during construction is not always laid correctly, and while a warranty still runs the fault may be someone else’s to put right.
Building over or near a drain. Extensions, conservatories and garden rooms frequently sit over a shared lateral or a public sewer. Severn Trent will want the position, depth and condition of the pipe before agreeing a build-over.
All the reasons a CCTV survey gets commissioned
Why drains fail in Penkridge
What is under the ground matters more than the age of the house. These are the conditions behind most of what we find here.
A village on the Penk, with the water table to match. Penkridge sits low against the river and the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal. Where groundwater is high, infiltration through a defective joint is a real finding rather than a theoretical one – and it loads a system that has no spare capacity in wet weather. What that causes: groundwater sitting around the pipe, so an open joint takes silt in as well as letting water out.
A historic core and a lot of newer estate. The old village centre runs on Victorian clay; the substantial modern expansion around it is PVC, where the faults are construction faults – pulled joints, debris left in the run, insufficient fall.
Off-mains drainage in the outlying hamlets. Towards Bickford, Levedale and Pillaton, septic tanks and soakaways are common, and none of that pipework is a water company’s responsibility.
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
On a public sewer, the 2011 transfer applies as everywhere. On a septic tank, all of it is yours.
Areas we cover
Acton Trussell, Bickford, Dunston, Levedale, Penkridge, Pillaton and Whiston — ST19.
Extending a property in Penkridge
Drainage across Penkridge — Acton Trussell and Bickford and the streets around them — follows one pattern. ST19 is what that covers.
The expensive version of this always runs the same way: plans drawn, quotes accepted, foundations marked out, and then somebody lifts a cover in the middle of where the extension is going.
If you intend to build over a public sewer or lateral drain, or within three metres of one, you need Severn Trent’s agreement. Two things catch people out after the 2011 transfer: the pipe down your own garden may be a public sewer if it serves more than one property, and the length beyond your boundary transferred as well.
They will want to know where the pipe runs, how deep it is, what condition it is in and where the chambers are. That list is a description of a survey with a drainage plan, which is why it is worth doing at design stage rather than after.
What actually blocks a drain in Penkridge
Around Acton Trussell, Bickford, Dunston the housing is old enough for this to matter, and ST19 is where we see it most.
Almost everything we pull out of a domestic drain falls into a short list, and most of it should never have gone down there in the first place.
Wet wipes. The single commonest cause we attend. They do not break up the way paper does, and once one snags on a rough joint the rest build against it until the bore is gone.
Nappies and sanitary items. They are designed to swell. A drain that will pass one will block on the third.
Fat, oil and grease. Poured down warm, set solid cold. On a ST19 run with any flat section it catches everything that follows.
Roots. Not a housekeeping problem – a structural one. Roots get in through a joint that has already opened, and then behave like a net.
A pipe that is already damaged. If a run blocks repeatedly in the same place, the cause is usually the pipe rather than what went into it.
Drainage for business premises
The commercial version of a blocked drain is rarely just a blocked drain – it is a closed kitchen or a yard that cannot be used.
Grease, silt and volume are the three differences from domestic work, and all three respond better to a scheduled jetting and survey than to being left until they stop the site. We work on Penkridge commercial premises on both bases.
Reading a survey of your Penkridge drainage
Reports confuse people because they mix two kinds of entry and only one is a problem.
Observations describe what is there – a junction, a chamber, a change of pipe material, the water level. In our surveys these outnumber defects by roughly three to one, and a tidy system with nothing wrong still generates a page of them.
Defects describe something wrong, and carry a severity. It is the severity, not the presence of a code, that matters.
Across every section we have graded, two thirds came back at the top grade. A long report is not automatically bad news.
Common questions
Water is getting into our drains rather than out — is that a problem? Yes. Infiltration means there is an opening, and near the Penk the groundwater to exploit it is always there.
Nearby: Cannock · Stafford · Brewood Coverage: Areas we cover across Staffordshire
Talk to the person who will do the work.
Surveys across the West Midlands, south Staffordshire, east Shropshire and north Worcestershire. Unblocking closer to home.