Emergency Blocked Drain Clearance in Brighton: 24/7

Brighton's drainage has a character all of its own, and it shapes every job we do.

Most of the city is Victorian and Regency terraces, and the drains under them are combined: one 19th-century clay run takes both the foul water and the rain off the roof. Old clay joints let tree roots in, and the same runs collect grease. The streets around Preston Park and Hollingdean are the worst for roots, because the trees there are mature and the pipes are shallow. One house blocks the run and four neighbours find out about it the same evening.

The city sits on chalk and the Brighton chalk aquifer. Chalk drains fast in principle, but there is very little soak-away at the surface, so a heavy downpour goes straight to the gullies. That is why water stands at doorsteps around The Level, along Lewes Road, and in the low parts of Patcham and Carden. A gully that is already half full of silt has no chance in that kind of rain.

The seafront is a different job entirely. Gullies there fill with shingle, sand and salt blown or tracked up off the beach, and they silt up until the pot is solid and the surface water has nowhere to go. Rods do very little against packed grit. It needs jetting to lift it out.

In Hanover, Kemptown, Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk, the practical problem is often reaching the drain at all. Streets are tightly parked, the conservation areas restrict what you can do, and a rear gully is frequently only reachable through the house or along a shared alley. Getting a van near enough and a set of rods to the chamber takes some working out on most of these calls.

• Blocked kitchen and bathroom sinks, basins and slow-draining wastes
• Blocked and overflowing toilets
• Outside drains and gullies clogged with silt, grease, shingle or sand
• Shared and combined drains serving terraced and converted properties
• Blocked soil stacks and downpipes feeding into the drain run
• Recurring blockages from tree roots and hardened grease build-up

Danny works with rods, high-pressure water jetting and plunging. Which one comes off the van depends on what is in the pipe and what he can physically get to.

Clearance in Brighton is priced over the phone. Describe what the drain is doing and Danny gives you a fixed price before he sets off.

There is no call-out fee and nothing gets added afterwards. The price is agreed before any work starts. What moves it:

• How accessible the drain is. An open gully at the front is one thing, lifting a chamber in a tight terraced yard is another
• Whether rods and plunging shift it or it needs the jetter
• The time of call-out. Nights, weekends and bank holidays may differ
• The severity. One slow sink is not the same job as a shared run backed up into two houses

Ask Danny for the price on the phone before you commit to anything.

Typical recent work: grease-choked kitchen wastes in Hanover flats, silted seafront gullies opened up with the jetter, and shared Victorian runs freed where they had backed up between neighbouring terraces. Danny tests the flow before he leaves, clears up after himself, and tells you plainly what was in there.