0800 772 33 99 — we cover B70 and B71 from our base in Castlecroft.

West Bromwich gives us two kinds of call: the terraced streets around Carters Green and Greets Green, and the large post-war estates – Charlemont, Friar Park, Stone Cross, Yew Tree – where the drainage is all of an age and tends to fail all at once.

Call and we will tell you when we can be there. You speak to the people doing the work.

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How we clear it

High-pressure jetting. On the estates, where several houses often share one run, jetting clears the whole length rather than pushing the problem into the next property along.

How high-pressure drain jetting works

Why drains fail in West Bromwich

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.

Extensive made ground and infilled sites. What that causes: the ground compacts for decades, so runs lose their fall gradually and solids start dropping out in the flat sections.

Shallow coal beneath much of it. The South Staffordshire Thick Coal was worked at shallow depth across the borough. Ground movement over old workings is the reason displaced joints are so common here and so rarely anybody’s fault.

Estates built to one specification, ageing together. Charlemont, Friar Park, Hateley Heath, Stone Cross and Yew Tree went up through the 1950s to 70s – the pitch fibre era. It is a bitumen-based pipe that deforms rather than cracks, so the bore closes gradually and blockages get steadily more frequent. When one house on a street starts having trouble, its neighbours usually follow.

Shared runs. A great deal of the estate drainage serves several properties from one pipe. That matters for who clears it and who pays.

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

If it keeps happening

A drain that blocks repeatedly has a structural cause, and clearing it again treats the symptom. We can put a camera down the same run while we are on site — see CCTV drain surveys in West Bromwich.

Who pays

The 2011 private sewer transfer moved shared drainage and everything past your boundary to Severn Trent. In West Bromwich, where shared runs across the estates are the norm rather than the exception, this is worth checking before you pay anyone – and we will say so if that is what we find.

Areas we cover

Black Lake, Carters Green, Charlemont, Friar Park, Great Barr, Greets Green, Hateley Heath, Hill Top, Lyndon, Stone Cross, Tantany, West Bromwich town centre and Yew Tree — B70 and B71.

Drainage for business premises

West Bromwich covers a fair spread of housing, from Black Lake, Carters Green, Charlemont, and this applies to most of it.

Drain rods laid out on wet paving beside a lifted cast-iron manhole cover, with a jetting hose coiled alongside

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 West Bromwich commercial premises on both bases.

Clay, pitch fibre or plastic in West Bromwich

Around Black Lake, Carters Green, Charlemont the housing is old enough for this to matter, and B70 and B71 is where we see it most.

A camera settles what you have in about a minute, and the answer changes what any future work costs.

Clay is the default assumption on older West Bromwich property. It is rigid and brittle: it does not rot, but it moves at its joints, and that is where roots get in.

Pitch fibre is the one that catches buyers out. Coal tar impregnated wood fibre, light and quick to lay, and it loses its round shape under load. There is no single joint to point at – the deformation runs for metres.

Plastic turns up on later runs and extensions. It is often spliced into an older clay system partway along, and our reports carry a specific code for exactly that change of material.

How quickly we can get to West Bromwich

Drainage across West Bromwich — Black Lake and Carters Green and the streets around them — follows one pattern. B70 and B71 are what that covers.

Ring us and you will get a realistic time before you commit to anything. The variable is what is already booked in, not the distance – West Bromwich is inside our unblocking patch and we are through it constantly.

You speak to the person who will do the work, not a call centre, and we will give you a price on the phone before we come out.

What the camera actually shows

In West Bromwich – B70 and B71 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Black Lake and Carters Green.

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.

What you get after a survey in West Bromwich

West Bromwich covers a fair spread of housing, from Black Lake, Carters Green, Charlemont, and this applies to most of it.

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

How quickly can you get here? Ring us and we will give you a realistic time before you commit to anything. The variable is what is already booked in, not the distance.

What will it cost? We will give you a price on the phone before we come out, so there are no surprises when we arrive.