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 Twickenham
- 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 Twickenham
Victorian terraces on original clay drains, plus river-level gullies near Eel Pie Island.
Twickenham is our home turf, and from a drain nerd’s point of view it’s a classic: street after street of Victorian and Edwardian terraces between the station and the river, most still running on their original clay drainage, laid when the houses were built and never touched since. Clay pipes from that era have joints every 600mm, and every joint is an invitation to the roots of the plane and lime trees that make streets like Popes Grove so good-looking. Root ingress and collapsed joints are our bread and butter in TW1 and TW2.
Down by the river, around Church Street and Eel Pie Island, low-lying gullies sit close to Thames level, so they’re slower to drain at the best of times and quick to back up when there’s weather. Further out towards Strawberry Hill and Twickenham Green, the between-the-wars semis add their own speciality: kitchen extensions plumbed into drain runs that were never designed for a dishwasher, a washing machine and a family of five.
Match days bring one more local quirk. The streets around the stadium have shared runs serving flats over shops, and 82,000 rugby fans are not gentle on them. If your drain has picked the wrong Saturday to give up, we know the shortcuts, we know the parking, and we answer 24/7.
We cover all of Twickenham (TW1, TW2) — from Twickenham Stadium, Church Street, Eel Pie Island and across St Margarets, Strawberry Hill, Whitton. Being genuinely local means we already know what Twickenham's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Twickenham →