James Drainage is the drain clearing side of the family plumbing and heating firm we work alongside, James Plumbing & Heating. It is their van, their engineers and their number. We are electricians, and this page exists because our customers keep asking us who to ring when the water will not go away.
A drain only announces itself once it has stopped working. The kitchen sink holds an inch of water for an hour. The shower tray fills while you are stood in it. A gully by the back door starts smelling on a warm afternoon. None of it is dangerous, all of it gets worse, and most of it is fixed in a single visit by someone with the right kit.
That work now sits with James Drainage. Same family firm, same phone, same patch of West London and Surrey, added because they were already carrying rods and a drain machine for their plumbing jobs and might as well do the job properly.
Blocked drains inside the house
Anything that empties slowly, gurgles, or backs up into the next fitting along. Waste pipes are narrow and the things that block them are predictable: fat and food waste under a kitchen sink, hair and soap in a bath trap, wipes in a toilet, coffee grounds anywhere at all.
- Kitchen sinks that hold water, drain slowly, or smell of what went down last week
- Baths, showers and basins where hair and product have built up in the trap or the branch pipe
- Toilets that fill to the rim, empty slowly, or push water back into the shower next door
- Washing machine and dishwasher standpipes overflowing mid-cycle
- Macerator units in loft and basement bathrooms, which block far more easily than a standard soil pipe
- Repeat blockages in the same fitting, which usually mean something structural rather than something stuck
Outside drains, gullies and manholes
Once a blockage is past the wall it stops being a plunger job. Outside, the usual causes are leaf and silt build-up in a gully, roots finding a cracked joint, a collapsed section of clay pipe in an older property, or a chamber that has simply never been cleared in the twenty years since the extension went on.
- Yard gullies and driveway channels pooling or overflowing after rain
- Inspection chambers standing full, which tells you the blockage is downstream of that point
- Soil stacks and back-inlet gullies serving a bathroom or a kitchen extension
- Soakaways and rainwater runs that have silted up and now flood a patio or a lawn
- Gutters and downpipes feeding into a blocked gully, which is often the real culprit
- Root ingress and cracked joints, found first, then quoted for properly rather than guessed at
Worth knowing: the drain that runs from your house to the boundary is normally yours to sort. Beyond the boundary it usually becomes the water company's sewer and their problem. If a blockage turns out to sit on their side, you get told that rather than charged for it.
Where James Drainage clear drains
The drainage work covers the same ground the plumbing side already does, run out of Twickenham:
Twickenham, St Margarets, Richmond, Teddington, Isleworth, Hampton, Whitton, Hounslow, Barnes, Mortlake, East Sheen, Kew, Kingston, Feltham, Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge.
If you are a street or two outside that list it is still worth ringing. Most of the TW, TW2 and KT postcodes are a short drive, and they will tell you straight away if you are better off with someone closer.
Who to call about a drain
Drainage enquiries go straight to James Plumbing & Heating, who run James Drainage. They answer their own phone rather than a call centre, so you get someone who can tell you what a job involves before anybody books a visit.
Anything electrical is still us, on the number at the top of this page.