I was called out the other week to a property in Bristol, customer told me over the phone that the “drain was blocked” and, wait for it, “there are rats running around in my garden”. For me this is not the first time facing a rats nest, but for the customer this was becoming a very stressful situation.
I arrived at the property within the hour and ran my CCTV on the private line from the customer side and could not find the blocked drain. I told the customer that I will look on the shared line outside the property. Now I was not surprised to see a couple of points where the drainpipe was damaged by roots growing through and suspect this is where the Rats are climbing through into the garden.
Because the damage was outside the customer’s property, I could not fix it, I could see a large break in the pipe, approximately 1.3m and directly above the break the Rat holes, in addition to this I could see another break in the drainpipe and I was able to capture this all on CCTV without the need to dig up the customers garden.
In the end all I could do was put a temporary fix to stop the rats getting into the garden and wrote a report with supporting CCTV footage showing the problem and helped the customer contact the right department in the water company responsible for the shared pipeline.
If you have any problems with a blocked drain, inside your house or outside, please call me I am here to help.
