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 Staines
- 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 Staines
Riverside town with a high water table: drains here fight the Thames as well as the fatbergs.
Staines drains do a job most drains never have to think about: they work with the Thames at the end of the street and groundwater a few feet down. The riverside roads between Staines Bridge and Laleham, and the low-lying streets towards Wraysbury in TW19, all sit on a high water table. When the river is up, gullies drain sluggishly even when they’re perfectly clear, and older pipes with worn joints let groundwater seep in, keeping runs part-full around the clock. A drain that’s already half busy floods the moment a real blockage arrives.
That’s why we treat Staines blockages with more urgency than most. The gap between “the shower’s a bit slow” and “there’s water coming up the downstairs loo” is shorter here, especially in winter. Wipes and grease do the same damage they do everywhere; the river just removes your margin for error. Locals who remember 2014 don’t need that explained.
One boundary worth knowing: we fix the drains. If river or groundwater has actually flooded into your home, the pump-out, drying and the insurance paperwork side is a specialist job, and our colleagues at Emergency Plumbers TW handle exactly that around the clock. For everything drain-shaped in TW18 and TW19, from Two Rivers to the bridge, one number, 24/7, and yes, we find the water table genuinely interesting.
We cover all of Staines (TW18, TW19) — from Staines Bridge, the Thames riverside, Two Rivers and across Ashford, Laleham, Wraysbury. Being genuinely local means we already know what Staines's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Staines →