Drainage engineers

What to put in your job description

• What is happening: a blocked toilet or sink, water backing up, a smell, an overflowing manhole.
• Where: inside, a gully or manhole outside, or a drain shared with neighbours.
• Whether neighbours have the same problem: a shared drain is often the water company's.
• How old the home is, and whether there are trees close to the drains.
• For new work: what you want, such as a new drain, a soakaway or a septic tank service.

Don't put your name, phone number or address in the description: every trade who covers your area reads it. Your name, phone, email and address go only to the trades who take the job (3 at most).

Questions to ask before you hire

• Is the price fixed, or by the hour? Is there a call-out charge?
• Will you do a CCTV survey, and can I have the video and the report?
• Is the problem in my drain, or in a pipe that is the water company's?
• If you dig, who makes good the ground, and is that in the price?
• Do you have public liability insurance?

Registers and schemes to check

There is no legal register for drainage engineers. Some belong to a trade body, such as the National Association of Drainage Contractors. In England and Wales, a drain that serves only your home and is inside your boundary is usually yours; a drain or sewer shared with neighbours, or outside your boundary, is usually the water company's, which repairs it free. New drains need Building Regulations approval. We don't check this for you yet.

What the job usually involves

• Clearing blockages with rods or a high-pressure water jet.
• A CCTV survey to see inside the pipe, with a video and a report.
• Repairs: a patch or a liner inside the pipe, or digging down to replace a broken section.
• Fixing gullies, manholes and soakaways, and emptying septic tanks.

How quotes and visits work

Unblocking is often a fixed price or a call-out charge with a price for the time. For a repair, a drainage engineer usually does a CCTV survey first and quotes from it. Ask for the survey's video and report: you can show them to your insurer or your water company.

Ask for a written quote (a fixed price) rather than an estimate (a guess that can change), and for what it includes. If you agree a job in your home, you usually have 14 days to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations; if you want work to start sooner, you may have to pay for what has been done.

Safety

• Don't go down a manhole or a deep inspection chamber yourself.
• Keep children and pets away from an open manhole.
• Raw sewage carries germs: wear gloves, and wash anything it touched.

Insurance and TrustMark

Ask for public liability insurance before work starts. It covers damage or injury caused by the trade to you, your home or someone else. Ask for the insurer's name and the cover's end date; you can ask to see the certificate.

TrustMark is the government-endorsed quality scheme for work in and around the home. Its registered businesses agree to its code of practice, and you can look them up on trustmark.org.uk.

Guides for homeowners

• How to compare quotes from local trades

We take jobs from anywhere in the UK: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Trades choose the postcode districts they cover.

Drainage engineers by town and city

England

Scotland

Wales

Northern Ireland