Teesside drainage FAQs

£80 to £150 for a standard blockage clearance, £150 to £300 for jetting, £100 to £250 for a CCTV survey, £300 to £1,000 for lining repairs, £150 to £400 for root cutting. Excavation is quoted per job.

Yes. The problem gets looked at, the price comes back in writing, and you decide in your own time. No charge and no pressure.

Attendance plus a defined period of work, commonly an hour. Ask what happens beyond that period, because the extension rate is where an £90 job quietly becomes a £200 one.

Yes, at almost every firm. Out-of-hours attendance carries a premium. If nothing is entering the property and the water is contained, a weekday morning is the cheaper option.

Only if the pipe is yours. Drainage inside your boundary serving only your house is your responsibility. Shared drains and the lateral beyond your boundary belong to Northumbrian Water and are cleared free of charge to you.

Ask whether the neighbours are affected. If several houses are backing up at once, it is a shared run and therefore the water company's. Lifting the chambers in order also shows where the water stops.

The council as highway authority: Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar and Cleveland or Hartlepool depending on the address.

For repairs to the drainage installations, yes, under the landlord's repairing obligations. Tenants can still be charged where a blockage was clearly caused by wipes, fat or similar misuse.

It is worth the money in three cases: a drain that keeps blocking, any quote that involves digging, and buying an older property. For a one-off blockage that clears and stays clear, no.

Usually. Patch liners and full relining repair cracks, open joints and root damage from inside the pipe, at £300 to £1,000. Complete collapses and badly sagged runs still need excavation.

Cured-in-place liners are generally rated for around fifty years and are not vulnerable to the joint movement and root ingress that damaged the original clay pipe.

Accidental damage to underground services is covered by many buildings policies, while gradual wear normally is not. A survey report is the evidence an insurer will ask for.

Fat and grease poured down kitchen sinks, wipes described as flushable, silt entering through broken gullies, and fine roots growing through old clay joints.

For a slow sink, occasionally. For a full chamber they achieve nothing and leave caustic liquid in standing water that someone then has to work in.

Because something in the pipe is catching solids: a displaced joint, a fracture, root ingress or a sag holding water. Repeat blockages are a structural signal, not bad luck.

Both are classic indicators of a broken drain. Persistent sewage smells and a new rat problem are worth a camera survey rather than an air freshener and bait.