High-pressure water jetting is the most satisfying thing we do, and given how much we enjoy the rest of the job, that’s a serious claim. A jetting nozzle runs at up to 3,000 psi and doesn’t just punch a hole through a blockage the way a rod does. It strips the pipe wall back to bare clay or plastic: grease, soap scale, root fibres, the lot, flushed out and gone.
Think of rodding as squeezing past the fatberg and jetting as evicting it.
When jetting is the right call:
- Grease and fat build-up in kitchen runs. This is most TW blockages. Grease doesn’t block a pipe overnight; it narrows it for years, and jetting resets the clock to day one.
- Root ingress. Fine roots from street trees and mature gardens find their way into pipe joints (a speciality of the leafier TW streets). Jetting cuts them back cleanly. If they’ve cracked the pipe, we’ll show you on camera and talk repair options honestly.
- Recurring blockages. If you’re on first-name terms with a plunger, the pipe is narrowed somewhere. One proper jet is cheaper than four call-outs.
- Scale in older pipes. Hard south-west London water leaves limescale in cast iron and clay runs. Jetting removes it without digging anything up.
What it costs: typical domestic jetting in the TW area runs £150–£300 depending on the length and state of the run. Price agreed up front, before the van door even opens. If a blockage clears with simpler kit, we use the simpler kit and charge for that instead.
What to do right now in Shepperton
- If the drain is completely blocked and backing up, stop adding water and call us. Jetting is usually how we'll clear it.
- Recurring slow drains are the classic sign a pipe needs jetting rather than another bottle of one-shot unblocker.
- Don't rent a pressure washer and improvise. Domestic washers can't reach the blockage and the wrong nozzle can damage older pipes.
Drain Jetting help, local to Shepperton
Riverside village where old village drains meet a floodplain water table.
Shepperton is the prettiest place we work and, drainage-wise, one of the most interesting (we know how that sounds; we’re at peace with it). The village core around Church Square and the lock is genuinely old, and some of its drainage is too: narrow runs, quirky private connections, and pipes that predate any map Thames Water holds. Finding out where a Church Road drain actually goes is half detective work, which is why the survey camera earns its keep here more than anywhere.
The other half of the story is the river. Much of TW17 towards the lock and the Thames Path is floodplain, with a water table to match. Older joints let groundwater seep in, so runs sit part-full, and a modest blockage backs up faster than the same blockage would on higher ground in, say, Hounslow. When the Thames runs high, the margin shrinks further. Village memory of 2014 does the explaining for us.
So our honest local advice: Shepperton drains reward acting early. A slow gully in October is worth a phone call, not a winter of hoping. And if river water has actually entered your home, that side (pumping out, drying, insurance evidence) is handled brilliantly by Emergency Plumbers TW, while we sort the drains. One of us is excited about the fatberg; it’s not them.
We cover all of Shepperton (TW17) — from Shepperton Lock, Church Square, Shepperton Studios and across Sunbury, Walton-on-Thames, Laleham. Being genuinely local means we already know what Shepperton's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Shepperton →