Burst Main or Blocked Drain Sutton Coldfield | Tell Fast

Water appearing where it shouldn't be is alarming. But there's a big difference between ringing Severn Trent and ringing a drainage engineer, and calling the wrong one wastes time you might not have.

I had a job on Brassington Avenue last spring where the homeowner had already waited two days for the water company before someone told them the problem was actually a blocked drain backing up through the gulley. Two days of water sitting in their front garden. Easily avoided if you know what to look for.

Here's how to read the signs.

What you're actually seeing: the two scenarios

When water appears unexpectedly, it's coming from one of two places. Either the supply side, clean pressurised water being pushed out through a crack or joint in the incoming pipe, or the drainage side, foul or surface water that can't get away because something is blocking the outgoing pipe.

They can look almost identical on the surface. Both can flood a garden, a driveway or a pavement. Both can seep up through the ground. The difference is in the detail, and once you know what to look for it's pretty obvious.

Signs you've got a burst supply pipe

The water coming in under pressure is the giveaway. Supply pipes are mains-fed, so the water doesn't just sit there, it keeps coming.

• The ground is wet continuously, even in dry weather, and the wet patch isn't getting smaller
• You can hear a hissing or rushing sound near the stop tap or along the boundary of your property
• Your water pressure inside the house has dropped noticeably
• The water meter (if you have one and can access it) is spinning even when every tap is off
• The water seeping up looks clean and clear, not grey, not smelling of drains
• There's no obvious reason for surface water, no recent rain, no overflow from a gutter or water butt

In Sutton Coldfield town centre around the B72 and B73 postcodes, the supply infrastructure under the older streets off the Parade and around Maney is getting on a bit. Burst mains here aren't rare. The Victorian-era supply pipes under some of those residential streets off Hill Village Road and Manor Road have been patched repeatedly over the years.

If those signs match, stop reading this and ring Severn Trent on 0800 783 4444. It's their pipe, their problem, their cost if it's in the public main. If the burst is on the private supply pipe between the public main and your property boundary, that one is on you, and you'll need a plumber, not a drainage engineer.

Signs you've got a blocked drain

Blocked drainage behaves differently. The water isn't being pushed in, it's being stopped from getting out. So what you tend to see is backed-up water with nowhere to go.

• Water pooling around the gully at the front of the house, or around the manhole cover in the driveway
• Sinks, baths or toilets inside draining slowly, gurgling, or refusing to drain at all
• An unpleasant smell, either from drains inside or from the garden near the manhole
• The wet patch appears after rain or after heavy household water use, not during dry spells
• Lifting the manhole cover (carefully, they're heavy) reveals water sitting at or near the top rather than running freely
• Neighbours reporting the same symptoms at the same time, which points to a shared drain blockage

Town centre properties in areas like Boldmere, Wylde Green and Tudor Hill often share drainage runs that date back decades. One household's cooking fat mixed with another's wet wipes and you've got a fatberg forming in a shared lateral that affects three or four houses at once.

Four Oaks and Mere Green properties with mature gardens are another story. Root intrusion is a regular culprit I pull out under CCTV, and by the time the roots are thick enough to cause a blockage they've often been growing into that pipe for years.

The tricky middle ground

Occasionally the two overlap and confuse things. A burst supply pipe can saturate the ground around a drain and make it look like the drain is the problem. Equally, a badly blocked drain that's causing sewage to back up and overflow at the surface can look, from a distance, like a burst main.

The smell test is your friend. Supply water doesn't smell. Backed-up drainage does, sometimes strongly.

Also check where the water is appearing relative to your property. A burst supply main usually appears along the line of the incoming supply, which typically runs from the street, under the front garden, to the stopcock just inside the front wall. A blocked drain tends to show itself at low points: the gully, the manhole, or wherever the pipe run sits shallowest.

Who actually deals with what

This part matters. Getting it wrong costs time.

Severn Trent handles bursts on the public water main in the street. They also cover supply pipes up to and including the boundary stopcock on some older agreements, though on newer ones the responsibility can sit with the homeowner from the boundary inward. Ring them first and they'll clarify quickly.

Your plumber handles the supply pipe from the boundary stopcock into your home.

A drainage engineer (that's us) handles everything on the drain side: blockages in the private drain from your property, shared lateral drains, collapsed sections, root cutting, high-pressure jetting, CCTV surveys to find the cause, relining if the pipe is cracked.

Severn Trent also has a sewer network, and they own the public sewers. If the blockage is in a public sewer rather than your private drain, that's theirs to deal with. The tricky bit is knowing where private ends and public begins. A CCTV survey is often the only way to find out definitively.

When you genuinely can't tell

Ring a drainage engineer. We can do a CCTV survey and tell you within the hour whether the problem is yours, your neighbours', or Severn Trent's. If it turns out to be a supply issue after all, we'll tell you that straight and not charge you for work you don't need.

I'd rather spend twenty minutes telling someone it's not a drain job than have them wait three days for the wrong trade to show up.

Drainsco covers Sutton Coldfield and the B72 to B76 postcodes, with engineers available 24/7. No call-out fee, and you get a clear price before we start any work. Give us a ring and describe what you're seeing. We'll point you in the right direction, whoever needs to come out.