Uxbridge has a busy town centre, student and rented housing near the university, and low-lying ground in the Colne valley, each with its own drainage problems.
The town centre carries the commercial load: restaurants, bars and food units in buildings whose drainage predates their current use, discharging into shared runs beneath a compact street pattern. Grease is the recurring theme for food businesses, and because premises share, one kitchen managing it badly affects neighbours who are doing everything right. Shared student and rented houses near the university are prone to blockages from wipes and cooking fat.
West of the town the ground changes. Near the River Colne, the Frays River and the old gravel workings the ground is low and can be wet, and drainage there can be affected by a high water table: open joints let groundwater in, drains run part-full and silt up. Ickenham and the higher ground towards Hillingdon are more conventional interwar suburb on clay, with the joint failures and root ingress that go with pipework of that age.
Compact commercial streets where premises discharge into common runs. One kitchen’s grease becomes everyone’s blockage.
Shared kitchens and bathrooms, where wipes and fat are the usual causes of blockages.
Low-lying gravel near the rivers and old workings. Groundwater can get into open joints, so drains do not run clean.
This page covers Uxbridge, Hillingdon and Ickenham (UB8, UB10, UB9). If your postcode is on the edge of this area, call and ask rather than assuming.
Call and speak to the engineer. 24 hours a day, including tonight.
Sinks, toilets, gullies and main drains cleared, with the cause identified rather than guessed.
Overflowing gullies and blocked manholes or inspection chambers, cleared and explained.
Toilets that will not flush, or that fill up and will not drain, cleared without damaging the pan or the soil pipe.
Kitchen sinks and waste pipes blocked with grease, cleared properly rather than just poked through.
Standing water in the bath or shower tray, and slow bathroom basins, cleared at the cause.
Sewage backing up, drains overflowing, or a home or business you cannot use until it is fixed. Phone answered 24/7.
Scours grease, silt, scale and roots off the pipe wall, rather than just making a hole through the blockage.
See the inside of the pipe: recurring blockages, pre-purchase checks, insurance and subsidence claims.
Cracked joints, root damage and collapsed sections, repaired without digging where the pipe allows.
Restaurants, pubs, offices, landlords and managing agents: planned maintenance and out-of-hours call-outs.
Leaks, taps, traps, toilet cisterns and waste pipes: the plumbing that often comes with a drainage job.
Common questions about drainage in Uxbridge, answered for the kind of property you find there.
Two things fix most of it: a bin in every bathroom and somewhere obvious to put cooking fat in the kitchen. Beyond that, if it still blocks in the same place, the pipe itself is probably catching debris and a camera survey will show why. Paying for repeat clearances year after year usually costs more than fixing the cause once.
A drain shared by separate properties is generally Thames Water’s responsibility if it was connected to the public sewer by July 2011, even where it runs under your floor, although arrangements within a single building can differ. What is yours is the pipework serving only your unit, and the grease you put into the shared run. We record exactly where a blockage sat, which helps settle it.
Call and speak to the engineer, 24 hours a day, including tonight.