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 Thames Ditton
- 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 Thames Ditton
Riverside village opposite Hampton Court: a high water table, village-centre clay and an island with its own drainage puzzles.
Thames Ditton is the riverside village in KT7 facing Hampton Court, a Georgian and Victorian High Street, cottages along the water, Thames Ditton Island, and 1930s and post-war streets spreading towards Hinchley Wood and Weston Green. The river is the drain nerd’s headline: it keeps the water table high, it keeps the ground around old clay pipes damp all year, and once a winter it lifts enough silt into the joints to close a run that behaved all summer.
Village-centre calls are mostly that. A gully off the High Street that has been fine since March backs up in the first wet November week, and the camera finds a joint with a lip and a little fan of silt behind it. Clearing is quick; lining the joint is what stops next year’s repeat.
The island and the riverside plots are their own adventure. Access is on foot, the runs are long, and the fix has to be done from the chamber because nobody is digging a riverside garden. We bring the long-reach kit, we reline rather than excavate, and we have been known to arrive by the footbridge with a camera reel on a sack truck. We cover Thames Ditton, Long Ditton and Weston Green at any hour.
We cover all of Thames Ditton (KT7) — from the High Street, Thames Ditton Island, Giggs Hill Green and across Esher, Long Ditton, Hampton Court. Being genuinely local means we already know what Thames Ditton's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Thames Ditton →