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 Wednesbury

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

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

An insurance claim. Escape of water and subsidence claims turn on evidence. A graded, coded report by a certified surveyor is what an insurer will accept.

All the reasons a CCTV survey gets commissioned

Why drains fail in Wednesbury

Most recurring problems here trace back to ground conditions rather than to anything that was put down the drain. This is why.

Where Black Country coal mining started. Wednesbury Old Field was worked for coal and ironstone earlier than almost anywhere else in the region, and shallowly. Centuries of settlement over those workings is why displaced joints are the defect we log most often in the town.

Made ground on top of old workings. Infilled sites sit over the mining legacy – two separate reasons for the same problem. What that causes: ground that keeps moving long after the workings closed, which pulls rigid clay joints out of line and lets roots and silt in.

Dense Victorian terraces with shared runs. Short-length clay, a joint roughly every metre, and one pipe frequently serving several houses. What that causes: one blockage affecting several households, and a real question about whose pipe it is before anyone pays for it.

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 drainage and anything beyond your boundary has been Severn Trent’s since 2011, which in Wednesbury covers a great deal of the older housing.

Areas we cover

Kings Hill, Mesty Croft, Moxley, Wednesbury, Wednesbury Oak and Woods Bank — WS10.

Surface water, foul, or both?

Kings Hill and Mesty Croft are a fair sample of Wednesbury drainage, and what follows is what we find across WS10.

CCTV view along a drain with green staining across the pipe wall

Worth knowing which system you are dealing with, because it changes who is responsible and what a blockage means.

Foul takes waste from the house. Surface water takes rain from roofs and hard standing. Combined takes both, which is what a great deal of older Wednesbury drainage does.

A gully overflowing only in heavy rain points at the surface water side, or at a combined run that has lost capacity. A toilet backing up in dry weather points at the foul side. Our reports record the use of every section, because a wrong connection – foul into surface water, or the reverse – is a finding in its own right.

Pipe material, and why we record it

Kings Hill and Mesty Croft are a fair sample of Wednesbury drainage, and what follows is what we find across WS10.

Every section in our reports names the material, because it is the first thing any repair quote will turn on.

Vitrified clay dominates older Wednesbury drainage. Short lengths, many joints, and the joints are the weak point rather than the pipe.

Pitch fibre appears on post-war estates. It deforms along its length instead of cracking at a point, so it is a whole-run problem when it goes.

Modern plastics are on newer work. Better in most respects, but not immune – they crush under load and settle in made ground like anything else.

Reading a survey of your Wednesbury drainage

We cover WS10, and this comes up often enough on Wednesbury property to be worth setting out properly. Kings Hill and Mesty Croft see it as much as anywhere.

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.

Before you build over a drain

We cover WS10, and this comes up often enough on Wednesbury property to be worth setting out properly. Kings Hill and Mesty Croft see it as much as anywhere.

Extensions and garden rooms in Wednesbury 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.

What you get after a survey in Wednesbury

Drainage across Wednesbury — Kings Hill and Mesty Croft and the streets around them — follows one pattern. WS10 is what that covers.

Four things, and they are the same whether the survey is for a purchase, a landlord or your own peace of mind.

Every accessible run on camera, so you can see the pipe rather than take our word for it.

Every defect coded to MSCC5 – the Manual of Sewer Condition Classification, 5th Edition, published by WRc. A standard means a defect is described the same way by any competent surveyor. “Joint displaced medium” has a precise definition: the pipe has moved at the joint by between one and one and a half times the wall thickness.

A condition grade per section, so an observation is separated from a problem.

A site plan showing where the drainage actually runs – for many properties the only accurate drawing that has ever existed.

The report comes back the same day, by NADC-certified surveyors.

Common questions

The manhole in our garden serves the whole row — is that ours? Probably not, since 2011. That is exactly the sort of thing a survey and site plan establishes.