Sometimes a drain isn’t blocked, it’s broken. Clay pipes crack, joints get pushed apart by tree roots or traffic, and old mortar simply gives up after a century of service. The tell-tale signs: a drain that keeps re-blocking after every clear, a permanently damp patch of garden, an unexplained dip in the driveway, or new visitors of the whiskered variety.
The good news, and we mean properly good: most broken drains no longer need digging up. Relining inserts a resin-soaked liner into the existing pipe and cures it in place, leaving a smooth new structural pipe inside the old one. No trench through your garden, no jackhammer through the patio, done in a day for most domestic repairs. (We think watching a liner cure is fascinating. You don’t have to. That’s what we’re for.)
How we play it straight:
- Survey first, always. We never quote structural work from a hunch. The CCTV survey shows you the damage on screen, so you’re deciding from evidence, not from a salesman’s frown.
- Repair options in plain English. A localised patch repair (£300–£600) fixes a single cracked section. Full relining runs £400–£600 per metre. Excavation is the last resort, and if someone quotes you a dig without showing you camera footage, get a second opinion. Ideally ours.
- Insurance help. Accidental drain damage is covered by many buildings policies, and we provide the survey footage and written report your insurer needs. If the damage has caused a leak or water damage inside the house, that side is a plumber-and-insurance job, and our friends at Emergency Plumbers TW handle exactly that, 24/7.
A cracked drain left alone becomes a collapsed drain, and a collapsed drain becomes a hole in the ground with your name on the invoice. Catch it at the crack stage.
What to do right now in New Malden
- Signs of a broken drain: one patch of lawn that's always soggy, a new sinkhole or dip in the drive, rats appearing, or a drain that re-blocks within weeks of being cleared.
- Don't panic about the word 'collapsed'. Most damage is a crack or a displaced joint, and most of it can be fixed without excavation.
- If a blocked or broken drain has already flooded part of your home, photograph everything before cleaning up. Your insurer will want the evidence.
Drain Repair & Relining help, local to New Malden
Interwar suburb on the Beverley Brook: long 1930s runs, a brook that backs up in storms, and grease from one of London's best restaurant streets.
New Malden, KT3, is interwar London at its most complete: street after street of 1930s semis between Kingston Road and the Beverley Brook, with a High Street that has become one of the best places to eat in south-west London. Both facts matter underground.
The semis have long garden runs with a gentle fall towards the brook, and the brook itself is the local wildcard. After heavy rain it runs high, the surface water system backs up, and gullies that are perfectly clear overflow because the water has nowhere to go. We get a lot of storm calls here and the honest answer is sometimes that the drain is fine and the brook is full. We would rather tell you that than clear a clear pipe and charge for it.
The High Street is a grease story. Dozens of kitchens on small, old pipes produce fatbergs that we find professionally fascinating and restaurateurs find expensive, and a planned jetting schedule beats a Friday-night flood every time. We cover New Malden, Old Malden and Coombe at any hour from the Kingston side.
We cover all of New Malden (KT3) — from the High Street, New Malden station, Beverley Brook and across Kingston upon Thames, Raynes Park, Worcester Park. Being genuinely local means we already know what New Malden's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in New Malden →