Recently we were called out to a property in St Ives, it was on the face of it a fairly standard job, blocked drain causing sewage overflow in the garden.

We arrived, the owners of the property explained the problem and then left us to it while they popped out to the shops. The normal procedure in such a case is to find the inspection chamber (manhole) down the line from the overflowing area and use high pressure water jetting to clear obstructions in the drain, allowing waste to flow correctly. On this occasion we identified that the drain followed an L shaped pattern but could not find the inspection chamber manhole cover where we expected it to be. We were just about to go to plan B when the owner arrived home, we explained that we were looking for a manhole cover in the garden but couldnt find it. The owner knew exactly why we couldn’t find it, it had recently been removed and replaced with a sunken water feature complete with Pea gravel!

Once the Pea gravel had been cleared from the manhole the problem was resolved.