News
Blocked drain investigation in St Neots delivers suprise cashback for customer
When called out to a reported blocked drain problem in St. Neots, Blocksaway engineer Steve was not at all convinced the client’s troublesome drains went the way he thought they did to the public sewer, so we traced them for him using our our advanced drain tracing equipment–to discover they discharged into a very full cess pit !
Despite having to pay to get this emptied, our customer was looking forward to recovering 10 years’ worth of sewerage charges levied on his Water bills since he had been there!
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Emergency drain clearing for Ely customer
Quite often Blocksaway is called upon to help customers retrieve drain rods they have lost down their drains. This was precisely the case when attending a customer in Ely, Cambridgeshire, but the problem was exacerbated by the fact this particular set of rods had a 4 “ plunger attached which had become wedged into a junction with a neighbour’s drain, effectively completely blocking the client’s drain and posing a future problem for his neighbours. This drain needed clearing, fast.
Unusually there was no manhole and therefore no access at this junction point, and other contractors had failed to help;so we inserted a camera from a manhole downstream in the neighbour’s garden and using live video were able to direct the use of the retrieval tool from a manhole upstream until it grasped the set of rods by the plunger and we were able to pull them all out.
Blocksaway attends every drain clearing job with a fully equipped van, so with ingenuity we were able to avert what would otherwise have been an expensive excavation.
Tags: A Prickly Blocksaway Rescue!
Blocksaway often gets called out at night and this was just such a case in St. Ives (Cambs).
Steve was attending a domestic dwelling with a blocked main and was tracking the run of the drains and manhole covers as best he could with a powerful torch.
Imagine his surprise when he shone it down a gulley with a missing cover to be confronted by 2 small glowing eyes! Further investigation revealed a hedgehog which had fallen in during its nighttime ramblings and got well and truly trapped.
Wearing his Blocksaway drain cleaning gloves made it an easy task for Steve to free up the gulley and release the bedraggled creature, which trotted off apparently none the worse for wear!
Steve also cleared the blockage in the main drain, but that’s another story!
A very peculiar emergency
As Steve was driving to an emergency drain clearing job in Peterborough along Thorpe Rd. early on Saturday morning 29th January, he noticed 2 ladies suddenly jumping out of a car at a junction, which was clearly on fire.
BlocksAway high pressure water jetting puts out a car fire in Peterborough
To the amazement and heartfelt gratitude of the shocked and shaken ladies he immediately pulled up alongside and was able to put the fire out with the BlocksAway high pressure water jetting machine which he always carries in his van. The police and fire service, who arrived shortly afterwards, were most impressed!
BlocksAway – The 4th Emergency Service!
The Rat
Steve was called out to a job in Huntingdon to clear a blockage from a kitchen drain, which he successfully achieved; however he noticed another drain coming into the manhole which appeared to be filling with earth; he cleaned this out as part of the one hour service and inserted the CCTV camera to see what was the cause; the lady of the house was watching the monitor and when she screamed, Steve knew he had found the culprit: a rat was dancing around in front of the camera!
Drain CCTV Footage on a collapsed drain reveals the rat.
A Potentially Explosive Situation in Ramsey!
Called out to a private customer’s drain that was repeatedly blocking, Steve from Blocksaway Ltd. decided to investigate the cause once he had cleared the blockage, all within Blocksaway’s £79 charge for an hour’s work. Steve inserted the CCTV camera into the drain downstream of the manhole and checked its condition for over 30’ along its length.Imagine his amazement when he then discovered the problem: a gas pipe had been installed straight through the middle of the 4” foul drain!
Gas pipe installed through foul drain causing recurring blockages
A good job Steve didn’t attempt to use the electro-mechanical cutter machine to descale the drain!
This is a good example of the very real benefit of the Blocksaway Ltd. policy of carrying the CCTV equipment on the van as standard.
