Blocked drains

We live on a hill with shared drains and we are house #2 on the chain. There is also house #3 and #4 and so on. A few days ago one of our drains blocked, backed up and caused a huge flood right outside my front door. The dynorod people came quickly and cleaned up the blockage and 2 hours later the next drain down the hill blocked too and this time it backed up and flooded my garden! The man from dynorod came over again and unblocked this drain. But I am left with two flooded areas. Who can I call to come and remove all this sewage? Can I call Thames Water ? The man from dynorod said that these drains are responsibility of Thames Water and had he known we are on a chain he would not have touched them.

akist said:

Can I call Thames Water ?

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Yes. Any drains that serve two or more properties are the responsiblity of the local water company.

Any Drainage engineer that knows the job would/should know straight away what the situation is, and inform you if the drain was shared! Who called a contractor out, and more importantly, who paid their bill? Secondly, sounds to me like whatever caused the first blockage, just got moved down the line, and promptly caused the second blockage.


It is worth speaking to Thames, but I would be looking at getting some advice, as firstly work may have been done that could/should have been done by Thames for free, and secondly, if the second flooding incident was caused by failure to clear the initial blockage properly, then the Muppets that failed to do the job properly in the first place, should sort their mess out free of charge! It is contractors that carry out unnecessary work/poor quality work and/or rip people off that give everyone else in the game a bad name.

That is what happened. Dynorod visited twice, second time without charge, realised that the drains where shared, and mentioned Thames Water. Thames Water came over and will come back to disinfect tomorrow.