Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
  • Drain inspection / cost / DIY?
  • DT78
    Free Member

    morning all – does anyone have any experience of a drain inspection?

    I think we have a drainage run along the side of the house, the grass is a slightly different colour and it appears to get quite saturated in heavy rain (more than other areas of the garden) I would expect it is still the original clay pipe and there is a large hedge near by. So thinking there is a risk a section maybe cracked.

    What sort of trade does this type of work? Not keen on googling for drain inspections, previous experience of using google to find contacts means I get a bigger firm in who try to rip me off (guttering – need to replace the lot mate £2k… local guy fixed for £150, boiler flue – lot needs replacing mate £1k, local guy £60 seal etc…)

    Is this something I can hire the equipment for and DIY? Access at one end via a draincover is easy. The other end of the downpipe is inaccessible (concreted into path)

    nedrapier
    Full Member

    have you got a pressure washer?

    if you have, get one of these, feed it in and see what happens. if it stops and won’t go any further, pull it out, lay out the length that was in along the drain and you’ll see where to dig for the blockage.

    If you haven’t got one, maybe this is the excuse you’ve been waiting for! clan bikes, car, patio, unblock drains. I got a mass of small roots that was blocking a sewer the other day. don’t know how much that would have cost to get dynorod out.

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kiam-Power-Products-Flexible-Retrojet/dp/B07BHN2F3H

    It’s worth investigating as much as you can yourself. For this sort of job, I think there’s a big margin put on for not being sure what/where the problem is. And by the time you’ve dug and got eyes on what needs doing, you might be happy enough to do it yourself.

    nedrapier
    Full Member

    When it rains, does water come out the end of the pipe a the cover?

    It’s not good to have the downpipes going directly into the ground, could be a good opportunity to get a hopper/leaf catcher put in. If there’s a small blockage in the pipe, leaves stuff can get caught and build up, stopping flow completely.

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    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    I think I paid c£150 earlier this year for the initial inspection that told me that piling the extension foundations had cracked (the now covered with a building) clay drain and both the front soakaways were silted up.

    £2.5k later new drains/rain water run off all dug and sorted. Should outlast me!

    DT78
    Free Member

    Thanks for the link.

    I have a el cheapo jet washer. Dumb question – when you feed it up the pipe do you have the washer running? If it is the run I think it is (not guaranteed as its underground!) The only route for the water to go is via the concreted in downpipe – and therefore should spray out at the top of the gutter.

    If I’m wrong on the pipe run it could be interesting inside the house as water shoots up the kitchen sink….the drain has 3 entry points, so I’m hoping the one that obviously goes in the direction of the downpipe is the right one.

    I suppose another idea is to wait until it is tipping it down again, and pop the cover and see if I can see flow. I think it is more likely its cracked so some water is escaping than fully blocked. Though my wife thinks its fine and I’m just being paranoid.

    Ideally I would want to put a hopper in if I could but that would mean breaking the path right by the door and digging it out to do it. It is a horrible 70’s crazy paving thing which needs to go, but doing the lot is a big job, and something we plan to do in a few years when we remortgage (subject to no post brexit house price crash…)

    Rubber_Buccaneer
    Full Member

    when you feed it up the pipe do you have the washer running?

    Yes, some of the jets point back so the device pulls itself into the drain. Don’t turn it on until the head is well into the drain or you will get sprayed. Same goes for when you pull it out but with added muck. Very effective

    Greybeard
    Free Member

    The jetwash water will just come back down the pipe to where you feed the hose in. The jetting head doesn’t fill the pipe. What’s the other entry point apart from the downpipe and the kitchen.

    If your downpipe and kitchen sink both feed into the pipe you need to check whether you officially have a combined system. The preference is to keep them separate, so that the water treatment plant doesn’t overflow when it rains hard. Some older houses only have one pipe to the main sewer, but there are also quite a few where the drains have been modified incorrectly, or bodged in the first place, and they end up with an improvement notice to put it right.

    CraigW
    Free Member

    You can buy a cheap endoscope camera that plugs in to your phone. Might let you see what is inside the drain.

    ads678
    Full Member

    To be honest I’d just stick a normal hose down there first and check you have flow through the pipe by seeing if anything comes out of the downstream manhole. If nothing comes out just get some cheap drain rods from b&q and see if you can clear the blockage. If the drain has collapsed jetting it won’t help.

    If you push some drain rods down it and hit a blockage you can then measure on the rods where the blockage is and if it’s only a shallow drain in grass it should be pretty easy to dig up and expose it to check it out, If it has collapsed you can just replace that section.

    5plusn8
    Free Member

    I had a drain clear and camera inspection by a local independent here in sunny Crawley, for a 3 metre straight run, was less then £100.
    The found and showed me where the clay pipe had collapsed ad was causing it to block.
    They dug it up and replaced it including two rainwater gullys and made good for a £1000.

    DT78
    Free Member

    £2.5k eek 🙁

    I believe the 3rd outlet runs under the garage, and patio to another drain cover, which takes the downpipes from the far side of the house.

    The house definitely mixes grey water with rain water. I have 3 drain covers and when lifted the pipework all looks clay / old so I believe it was built like it in the 30’s. The garage dates from the 50’s and goes over the top of a drain as a soil pipe from upstairs goes through the garage roof into the garage floor. From looking at others houses in the area of the same age they all seem to be built the same way.

    Thanks for the ideas, I think I will try with a hose first before buying the jet wash.

    If it is a damaged section and its clay will I have to replace the whole run? How would I connect plastic to the original clay – its approx. 10m long.

    DT78
    Free Member

    This looks quite useful
    https://www.screwfix.com/p/karcher-drain-gutter-cleaning-kit/91778#_=p

    Could do the gutters as well – looks like it isn’t a universal fit. Do karcher to netflisk adapators exist? just looked lots of different ones on amazon

    And this forum really needs to sort the ads out, its regularly causing my browser to hang. No other website does this.

    nickjb
    Free Member

    If it is a damaged section and its clay will I have to replace the whole run? How would I connect plastic to the original clay – its approx. 10m long.

    You can get rubber couplers to join clay to plastic. Easily available, screwfix, etc. I’d still try and do a decent run as the extra effort may save more hassle later. Its quite hard to not damage old bits when you take out the damaged bits. Might old clay had a crack at almost every joint. Fine if you didn’t move it but a slight displacement and it opened up. In the end I replaced the lot right up to the T onto the public sewer.

    In terms of inspection the USB cameras for a phone are pretty decent. Just need a phone with OTG. Worth a punt as they are dirt cheap. It can be quite hard to interpret the image but a significant block or crack should be fairly obvious

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    Just rod it to start with.

    fossy
    Full Member

    Normal hose or rod – your jet wash ‘trigger may not fit.

    See if you get ‘flow’. Our loo kept backing up, on inspecting one man hole, couldn’t see a flow when we flushed the loo. Opened another, dry. Then spotted tiny fine routes had grown through the manhole and into and around one of the outlets. That removed, we had flow again.

    The ‘green/damp’ area could be a naturally poor draining part of the garden – is the pipe under the lawn. Possibly lift the grass, and dig down to inspect. Backfil with hardcore to increase drainage if no fault found ?

    takisawa2
    Full Member
    ourmaninthenorth
    Full Member

    £2.5k eek

    Only because I added extra work into it – I had an extra foul drain dug so I could have the washing machine in the garage.

    I can’t remember the split in prices between replacing the old drain (and digging two new manholes) and the new section. Priced by the metre if I remember right.

    Investigate first then understand the costs..!

    EDIT: they also discovered and had to deal with two old field drains in the garden. One was about 5 feet deep and could easily fit a man in..! Was covered over by a couple of flags barely beneath he topsoil/grass. Still made a convenient place for the soil to go in from where the new drain was dug. Fascinating (if you’re dull like me).

    wrightyson
    Free Member

    If you can’t fathom the runs it might be worth taking a few levels to start with, that way you should be able to gauge which are the upstream and downstream manholes if it isn’t obvious. Then you can diagnose the flows, get some drainage dye, very easy to spot that way. Once you’ve established where the blockage is get some rods as I advised above, no point **** about with pressure washers etc, a drain jetter is nothing like a pressure washer and you’re just liable to end up (quite literally) covered in shit.

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