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During the heavy rain of the October 99 the drains finally packed up
and began spewing everything out of an old pipe opening behind the back door (since removed).
I hired 20m of rods and shoved them in, but it made no difference.
So Becka called in some "professional" help.
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They were completely crap, here shown managing to manouver their
drain camera a whole metre in before getting it stuck. Then they billed us
for this "work".
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When we received a bill for over 300 quid for this pathetic little hole
which didn't even achieve anything. We sacked them because they obviously
weren't going to cope. I didn't want to see any more money, even insurance money,
going to these people.
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Fortunately the drain was traced a far enough distance
away to dig a test hole. I couldn't see the point of non-convincing "root-cutters", etc.,
for a pipe that was only 1.5m deep and over 25m long. The way
these cowboys work is convince you that something simple (a man with
a shovel) is actually much more complicated than it looks.
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The test hole was quite surprising. It showed that the soil
was only 80cm deep, but that there was a trench dug into the sandstone bedrock
in the bottom of which was laid the waste pipe.
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However, this digging was going to take all week by hand, so we hired
one of these for 24 hours. It was the best spent 60 quid of the year.
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You can even invite your friends and neighbours for a play.
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Then you get some good people to come and replace the pipes.
This time instead of going for the company with the best advertizing, Becka found
the company which the council uses for its work.
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There are more trenches than drains so it's possible
that the drain follows the trench rather than the other way round.
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To our surprise they replaced a segmented clay pipe with a
newer segmented clay pipe rather than with, say, a seamless plastic pipe.
Surely the design flaw (that roots can get in through the gaps) is still there.
But what do I know?
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We refilled the hole with too much soil so it is now a grassy dike.
We are hoping that the ground will pack down to become level in a few years, but with
no experience of this a miscalculation is likely.
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The problem of the severe root infestation carried on beyond the
railings to where it joined the main drain in the middle of the road. Here they are
having a poke from the other end. The pipe below is 1.5m in diameter and 8m down.
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Unable to dig up the road as promised (the council had just resurfaced
it all and didn't want anyone to destroy its state of perfection) they sent the root-cutters in
from a hole in the pavement.
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After many days pulling this dense root garbage out
a bit at a time the drains were finally clear!
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