Collapsed Drain Repair New Malden | No Digging Required
A Beverley Park garden nearly got dug up before we ran a CCTV survey and relined the collapsed drain instead.
The call came in on a Tuesday morning. A homeowner near Beverley Park had noticed the lawn was soft and boggy in one corner, and a faint smell was drifting up whenever it rained. A local contractor had already told her the drain had probably collapsed and she'd need to dig up a 6-metre stretch of garden to replace it. She'd spent the weekend dreading the bill.
She rang us for a second opinion.
What we found
We arrived, ran a CCTV survey down the inspection chamber at the side of the house, and pushed the camera along the run toward the boundary. About four metres in, the picture told the story clearly. A section of the old clay pipe, almost certainly original to the house, had fractured and partially collapsed inward. Roots from a mature shrub nearby had found the crack years ago and widened it steadily. The pipe hadn't failed all at once. It had been quietly losing ground for a long time.
The good news: the collapse was localised. The rest of the run was cracked in places but still holding its shape. No open voids beneath the garden, no sewage pooling under the foundations.
No digging required.
What we did
We cleared the root mass first using a rotary cutting head, then high-pressure water jetting to flush the line clean. Once the camera confirmed the pipe was clear and we could see the full extent of the damage, we relined the affected section using a felt liner saturated with resin, pulled into position and inflated against the pipe wall until the resin cured hard.
The finished liner bonds to the inside of the old host pipe and effectively becomes a new pipe within a pipe. Smooth bore, no joints for roots to find again, rated to outlast the original clay.
Total time on site: just under four hours. The lawn stayed intact.
The before and after
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Pipe condition | Fractured clay, partial collapse, root ingress | Relined, smooth bore, structurally sound |
| Garden | Soft patch, faint odour after rain | Undisturbed, no excavation |
| Flow | Restricted, slow to clear | Full bore, draining freely |
| Guarantee | None | 20-year guarantee on the remedial work |
The lesson worth taking
If someone tells you a collapsed drain means a digger in the garden, get a CCTV survey done before you agree to anything. Excavation is sometimes the right answer, particularly if the pipe has moved significantly or there's a void. But a localised collapse or fracture in an otherwise sound run is often a relining job, not an excavation job. The two are not interchangeable, and the difference in disruption is enormous.
Older clay pipe runs are common across Beverley Park, Malden Manor and the streets around Green Lane. They've had a long life, but they do fracture. Knowing what you're actually dealing with before committing to a fix is the most useful thing a CCTV survey can give you.
If you're seeing a boggy patch, a slow-draining inspection chamber or an unexplained smell, Drainsco covers New Malden and the surrounding KT postcodes with engineers available around the clock. There's no call-out fee, and we'll give you a clear price before any work starts.
Danny Whelan, Emergency call-out engineer
Danny does the late nights and early mornings. He is the one who talks you through an overflowing manhole while he is still in the van, and he writes the way he answers the phone at 2am: calm, clear and on your side.
Blocked drain in New Malden?
Engineers on call 24/7. A clear price before we lift a cover, and no call-out fee.
0204 652 1004