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 Teddington
- 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 Teddington
Victorian terraces plus side-return extensions: modern kitchens on 1890s drain runs.
Teddington’s drain story is written in its lofts and side returns. The Victorian terraces between the High Street and the river are some of the most extended houses in London: side-return kitchens, loft bathrooms, utility rooms, all plumbed (enthusiastically, and sometimes optimistically) into drain runs laid in the 1890s for a house with one cold tap. When a modern family kitchen with a dishwasher and an American fridge drains into a four-inch clay pipe with original joints, the pipe eventually files a complaint. That complaint usually arrives via the downstairs gully, on a Sunday.
Around Bushy Park and the Grove Gardens streets, mature trees do their usual quiet work on the joints, and the closer you get to Teddington Lock the more the river’s water table joins in. We also see a very Teddington special: beautifully landscaped gardens where the drain’s inspection chamber was paved over during the makeover, which turns a twenty-minute clear into a treasure hunt. (We bring the metal detector. Genuinely.)
None of this is a criticism, Teddington; extend away. Just know that TW11 is covered 24/7 by people who find your 130-year-old pipework fascinating rather than annoying, quote before starting, and put the flowerpots back where we found them.
We cover all of Teddington (TW11) — from Teddington Lock, Broad Street, Bushy Park and across Hampton Wick, Twickenham, Strawberry Hill. Being genuinely local means we already know what Teddington's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Teddington →