Blocksaway Ltd. attended a house in Girton where the client had experienced huge problems with their foul drains constantly blocking. Steve soon discovered this was caused by the worst case of tree root ingress he had ever come across, and having high pressure water jetted the pipework to remove the roots and restore it to full bore there was no alternative but to get very wet and remove the root balls from the manhole by hand. Our client was so grateful he paid Steve for an extra hour to get some new wellingtons!

You can view some images of the offending Rootball via the link below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81004116@N00/7397008088/in/set-72157630182868586/

Blocksaway Ltd are pleased to announce that they have been accepted as a member of The Guild Of Master Craftsmen. details can be found here.

Chairman of Blocksaway Ltd., Kevin Doyle, returned last December from a 1400 mile car rally in S. India from Goa to Kerala via the W. Ghat mountains through Karnataka and the tea plantatations of Tamil Nadu; the car was an “ Ambi” essentially our old Morris Oxford still manufactured in India. He raised £4,500 (including sponsorship from Blocksaway Ltd), which has been split equally between the English charity The Rainbow Trust, which helps families with terminally ill children, and an Indian charity Adventure Ashram , which funds education and medical projects for the poor children of S.W.India.

Kevin said the most important instrument in the car was the horn and that the driving style in India was extremely “exciting” (read : dangerous) but everyone accepted it as normal and there was no road rage!

All Saints’ Church in the Market Square, Huntingdon had flooding problems during heavy rainfall. The churchwardens called in Blocksaway in October to sort out the problems ; it took just 4 hours to clean every downpipe,gulley and drain using a high pressure water jet at 3000psi; some of the problems were caused by tree roots which were removed.

All Saints’ is predominantly a 15th century building in the perpendicular style but there was originally a saxon church on this site in the very centre of Huntingdon.

Blocksaway chairman, Kevin Doyle, has a particular interest in church buildings, being a churchwarden himself and having acted as grant secretary for Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust for over 10 years.

Since its formation 2 years ago Blocksaway Ltd. has always maintained an ethical approach to its emergency drain cleaning operations, assuring our potential clients that ”we will never take financial advantage of those in urgent need of help”.

In line with this policy, we have decided to charge our normal weekday rate of £89 for emergency call-outs at weekends and in the evenings as well.

This competitive rate is not subject to the addition of VAT or any other hidden charges.

A director of Blocksaway reminisces on the occasion when as a director of a national competitor he was asked by an insurance company to send an engineer to a pub in Lincolnshire, where the landlady claimed she had lost a large diamond from her wedding ring down the waste whilst washing up the beer glasses.

All 10 yards of 2” pipework and the bottle trap were carefully dismantled , cleaned and checked and the gulley outside to which the pipework led carefully emptied, but no sign of the diamond!

The engineer reported back that the ring clasp appeared rather too cheap to have held a diamond, but we don’t know the eventual decision of the insurance company.

Once we were called out to a small business in Cambourne, Cambridgeshire because it had been discovered that someone had attempted to steal £500, but rather than be caught redhanded with the money they had flushed it down the toilet, leaving a few tell tale notes in the bowl.

We asked the proprietor where the next manhole was and were told categorically it was outside the toilet window; we blocked off the drain outlet from this manhole with a bung and pressurized the toilet bowl to push the remainder of the money through—Result: absolutely nothing: it was the wrong manhole!

Luckily the interceptor just before the main sewer was partially blocked and the money was found floating inside it.

A total of £490 was retrieved and dried out by the proprietor, but we’re not sure what he said to the bank when he paid it in!