0800 772 33 99 — we cover TF11 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 Shifnal

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

No record of where anything runs. For a good many properties here the site plan the survey produces is the only accurate drawing of the drainage that has ever existed.

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.

All the reasons a CCTV survey gets commissioned

Why drains fail in Shifnal

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 market town that burnt down and was rebuilt. Much of Shifnal’s centre dates from the rebuilding after the 1591 fire, and the drainage beneath it has been altered, extended and re-routed repeatedly since. On the older properties nobody knows what runs where until a camera goes down.

Modern estates on the Telford side. The newer housing towards Priorslee brings PVC and, on the slightly older parts, pitch fibre – the 1950s-70s pipe that deforms rather than cracks.

Rural properties on private drainage. Towards Sheriffhales, Hilton and Beckbury, septic tanks and treatment plants are common, and the whole system is the owner’s responsibility.

Which is why we would rather put a camera down the run than tell you what is probably wrong with it.

Who pays

Where a property is on the public sewer, the 2011 transfer applies as elsewhere. Where it is on a septic tank, all of it is yours.

Areas we cover

Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee, Ryton, Shifnal and Sheriffhales — TF11.

What the camera actually shows

Shifnal covers a fair spread of housing, from Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee, and this applies to most of it.

CCTV view along a sound clay drain, the bore clear and the walls unobstructed

A survey is not a torch down a hole. The camera is fed the length of the run and every observation is recorded against a distance from the start.

Displaced joints show as a step or a crescent of shadow where the far pipe no longer lines up with the near one.

Open joints show a dark band all the way round, sometimes with soil visible behind.

Roots appear as fine fibres trailing in the flow, or a dense mass filling the bore – nearly always at a joint you can see behind them.

Cracks are break lines that are not visibly open, recorded by clock position.

Infiltration is water entering where no connection exists.

Every one of those carries a still image in the report, so you can see the thing being described rather than take a code on trust.

Commercial and landlord work around Shifnal

In Shifnal – TF11 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Beckbury and Hilton.

The report matters more on commercial work than domestic, because somebody else usually has to be satisfied by it – a landlord, a managing agent, an insurer or an incoming tenant.

Every section graded, every defect coded to MSCC and positioned in metres, a plan of the system and the full recording. That is a document you can hand over rather than a verbal account of what somebody saw.

Planned rather than reactive is the cheaper pattern on a Shifnal commercial site: a survey before a lease event, a jetting visit before the season that always causes trouble, rather than an emergency at the worst moment.

Tree roots and Shifnal drainage

Around Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee the housing is old enough for this to matter, and TF11 is where we see it most.

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.

Why it only floods when it rains

On Shifnal property, and particularly around Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee, this is the usual picture.

A drain that copes all week and backs up in a downpour is usually telling you about capacity rather than a blockage.

On combined systems, common across older Shifnal property, roof and yard water shares the pipe with everything else. Lose part of the bore to silt, roots or a displaced joint and the run still copes with normal flow – until the rain arrives.

Our surveys record water levels at intervals for exactly this reason: a section holding water where it should be running is a finding, not a detail.

Pricing, and why we quote before we travel

Shifnal covers a fair spread of housing, from Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee, and this applies to most of it.

Nobody likes a price that appears after the work. We give you one on the phone for Shifnal work, agreed before we set off.

The two things that move it are access and whether the run needs clearing before it can be surveyed. Both are things we would rather establish in the conversation than on your driveway.

Extending a property in Shifnal

Shifnal covers a fair spread of housing, from Beckbury, Hilton, Priorslee, and this applies to most of it.

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.

Common questions

Nobody knows where our drains run — can you find out? Yes, and on Shifnal’s older properties that is often the main reason people call. The survey produces a site plan as well as a condition report.