Sewer constantly blocking. F my effing life today

[Jamfirstest]

Had the sewer pipe blasted on Sunday and about 3rd time this year. Arrived home today to standing water in the drains I'm so gutted.

We have 3 loos. Downstairs is connected to a branch sewer and is fine. 2 x upstairs loos feed into a sewer that's underneath drain by back door. Sewer then collects from middle drain which is the showers and then a 3rd which is the gutter. The sewer blocks between the 1st and second drain.

The drain unblocker chaps put a camera down and said there is a concrete lip which stuff gets stuck on, nothing much else going on.

I can reach all the other drains with the jet washer but not this blocked stretch,

It's £115 every time the blasters come out.

Any ideas??

I'd get Home Emergency cover on your home insurance, ours is about £4 a month to add on, and it covers stuff like this. Also recently saw a Homeserve promotion which was also I think £4 a month for the first year. At least it would pay for the emergency callouts.

Drains insurance might be worth getting, e.g. Homeserve as PP suggests, although the cheap offer price (can be as little as £1 a month with a flier that comes with the water bill?) rapidly increases in second year.

But it is better to prevent rather than cure in this situation, less stressful. Big shot of chemicals is a tiresome but necessary drains maintenance job here.

Not quite what you are asking but do check that clearing it is your responsibility. There is a rule for many houses earlier than 1937 any blockages are the responsibility of your water board. I had a blocked pipes problem with my Victorian house and paid to have it cleared. The company didn't bother to flag up that it was actually Thames Water's problem so after I discovered this it was always Thames Water I called and they would send someone out to clear it at their expense.

If your property was built prior to 1 October 1937, it's likely to have a section 24 sewer nearby. A section 24 sewer is a public sewer, which falls under the care of an appointed company known as a 'sewerage undertaker'.

The only solution is get it dug out and replaced at the lip. How deep is it? This kind of fix is usually not that expensive.

It's 100% pre 1937

@Jamfirstest It's not something the water companies publicise unsurprisingly but technically these pipes are their property. Worth getting in touch with them to find out.

I can't see anything on the south west water page

Like I say @Jamfirstest they don't publicise it. Search of section 24 sewage pipes. Also check out Citizens Advicr

You can get a wiggly worm drain unblocking attachment from Karcher for their pressure washers which is brilliant and would pay for itself in one use.
www.kaercher.com/uk/accessory/pipe-cleaning-set-15-m-26377670.amp.html

I’m not UK based anymore but I am a civil engineer and I know that here anyway you are responsible for non mains pipes on your own property (connections) and the water authorities (local authorities here) are responsible for the mains sewers. So it might be the same where you are but it is a long time since I worked in the UK so I don’t remember.

We still find unblocking the sewer ourself by jetting is the easiest way. As an aside we cannot relay our sewers as there isn’t the fall we would need so we are stuck with it, so you are not guaranteed that relaying is always possible we have tried to improve it is best as we could in our situation.

Personally I wouldn’t use chemicals because it won’t solve the problem and it might damage the pipe but as I said DH does the jetting so it is easy for me to say that.

Yes definitely to changing to a thinner loo paper as well. I am something of an expert unfortunately on these matters as it always falls to me to unblock the drains/sort out our septic tank as my DH can't handle it

You don’t have to have the lip dug out
We had the drains under our old flat relined. Digging would have meant removing flooring and probably moving out. It wasn’t hugely expensive and solved the similar issues we’d been having.

I'm ordering one for our macallister x

Another point about 'fixing' the sewer - was it the drain unblocking company that told you it needed fixing?
We had a big-name drain unblocking company out to clear a blocked drain once and they told us we needed to get the pipe relined as it had partially collapsed, and they offered to send us a quote.
We had an independent survey done - the drain was perfectly fine, in no way collapsed and not in need of any work. Seems the unblocking company had been trying to upsell us some major work that was not required.
The issue was simply the size of the pipes, and changing the loo paper used was enough to stop all the blockages (in that house, we now have even worse drains).

Not enough power in the flush.
I have piles and I can force the fucker past them.
😉😁😁

The drain company don't carry out works they just blast it

Caustic soda didn't work. It's now at v v v slow drain stage

In our case the unblocking company was passing on the work to an affiliated company with a different name (hence the keenness to identify a problem and quote for it).

We use the HG brand chemical drain unblocker as maintenance every couple of weeks, to prevent a blockage forming or to prevent a blockage getting problematic. Sorry, might not be much help if the blockage is already entrenched. We were in your position, with all the neighbours shrugging and saying it must be us because previous occupants had never had a problem. We later found out the previous occupants had been putting unblocker down the drains every couple of weeks for decades to avoid the problems, no-one told us that for literally years.

I gave up and called the drain blasters. They cleared it and out the camera down. The pipe has dropped a bit more so the flow is fecked now. It's being repaired in a couple of weeks unless it's literally £5k. I've had enough now

Thanks all xx

Oh no! I'm so sorry it's been ended up as a big bill, is it definitely yours to pay and not the water companies?