Drain trouble in Putney? We answer 24/7.

Putney, SW15, climbs from the river: Victorian terraces along the Lower Richmond Road and the Embankment, Edwardian avenues up West Hill, mansion blocks along the Upper Richmond Road and big houses towards the Heath. The bottom of the hill is a water table story and the top is a long-run story, and the mansion blocks in between are a shared-stack story all of their own.

By the river, old clay joints take on silt each winter as the ground saturates, and the Embankment gullies back up whenever the Thames is high and the surface water system has nowhere to send the rain. We clear the private run and say plainly when the river is the limit rather than the pipe, because clearing a clean drain and invoicing for it is not how we want to be remembered.

The mansion blocks are the local speciality. Many flats, one stack, and a blocked toilet on the second floor that is really a stack problem four floors tall. We check before anyone plunges. Up the hill, the big houses have long runs under mature gardens and the Heath’s trees have found the joints, and the camera finds which joint. We cover Putney and the Heath around the clock from the Barnes and Roehampton side.