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 Teddington
- 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 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 →