Roots cut back to full bore with a mechanical cutting head, then the camera goes in to find the joint that let them in. Fixed price agreed before we start.
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Message on WhatsAppTree roots do not break into a drain. They find a way in that is already there. A hairline crack in a clay joint, a displaced collar, a perished seal on a cast-iron connection, and behind it a supply of water and nutrients that nothing else in the soil can match. A root the width of a hair finds the gap, and within a couple of seasons it is a mass the width of your arm.
By the time you notice, the drain is usually running slow rather than blocked. Water backs up in the gully after heavy rain, the toilet takes a second flush, or a manhole holds water that should have gone. The clue that it is roots rather than fat or wipes is that it comes back. Clear it, and a few months later it is exactly the same again, in exactly the same place.
We cut the growth back to the full bore of the pipe with a mechanical cutting head, then put the camera through. Cutting the roots out deals with today. Finding the joint they came in through is what stops it happening again next year, and that is the part most people have never been shown.
The same drain blocks again every few months, always at the same point
Water drains away slowly rather than not at all, and gets worse after rain
Mature trees, a hedge line or heavy shrub planting within about ten metres of the run
Older clay or pitch fibre pipework, common in anything built before the 1970s
Rodding clears it for a while, but the same length of run keeps silting up
A shared or back-court run that several properties use and nobody has surveyed
We put the CCTV camera through before touching anything, so we know it is roots and not a collapse, and we know exactly which metre of pipe to work on. Guessing at this stage costs you money.
Once we have seen the run, David or Chris tells you what it costs to cut it back, by phone or by text so you have it in writing. Nothing starts until you have agreed to it.
A rotating cutting head is fed down the run on flexible rods or a jetting hose. It shears the growth off flush with the pipe wall rather than just punching a channel through the middle of it.
Cut root material is washed down to the chamber and lifted out. Left in the pipe it becomes the next blockage, so this part is not optional even though nobody sees it.
We survey the cleared run and show you what is left: full bore restored, and the joint or crack the roots were entering through. You get the footage and a plain-English report, not a sales pitch.
Root ingress is a Glasgow problem more than it is a national one, and it comes down to what the city planted and what it laid pipes in. The inter-war and post-war suburbs, Bearsden, Milngavie, Newton Mearns, Giffnock, Clarkston, were built with mature street planting and generous gardens, over drainage laid in short salt-glazed clay lengths with mortar or collar joints every metre or so.
Short clay lengths with a joint every metre. Ground movement opens one, and the root finds it. The most common single cause we cut out.
The suburbs planted between the wars are now eighty years of root growth over drainage laid at the same time.
Beech and privet get overlooked entirely because a hedge does not look like a tree. The root plate is wide and shallow, and it crosses drain runs.
Roots grow towards moisture. A joint that already weeps is advertising itself, which is why they find the same defect every time.
A previous clearance that punched a channel and left it. The growth is back within a season because nothing addressed the entry point.
Long runs under communal ground, planted over, and belonging to nobody in particular until they block.
Good news: every one of these has a clean, proven fix, and we'll show you exactly what we found.
Get it fixedGlasgow-based. David and Chris do the work themselves, and one of them answers the phone.
You see the growth before we cut it and the bore after. Nothing is described that we cannot show you.
A rotating cutting head shears growth flush with the pipe wall. Punching a hole through the middle just delays it.
Fully insured on every job. Certificates available on request.
Agreed by phone or text before we travel. No surprise add-ons at the end.
If the joint is beyond sealing, we say so and quote the repair. Cutting the same run every year is not a fix.
Rotating mechanical cutting heads, sized to the bore of the pipe, driven either on flexible rods or on a jetting hose. Different heads for a 100mm domestic run and a 150mm shared or commercial one, because an undersized head leaves a channel and an oversized one will not pass a bend.
High-pressure water jetting to 4000 PSI to flush the cut material clear and scour the pipe wall back to full bore. Root removal without a proper flush leaves the debris in the run, where it becomes the next blockage.
HD CCTV survey equipment before and after, with the footage recorded and given to you. Before, to confirm it is roots rather than a collapse; after, to show the bore and the entry point.
Drain tracing and depth measurement where the entry point needs locating from the surface, so a repair can be quoted accurately rather than by opening the ground and looking.
There is no fixed call-out fee. David or Chris tells you the price on the call or by text before setting off, and nothing starts that you have not agreed to.
What the job costs depends on the length of run affected, how established the growth is and how accessible the chamber is. A single length cleared through an accessible manhole is a different job from thirty metres of shared back-court run reached from one end, which is why we survey before quoting rather than after.
If the survey shows the joint needs sealing as well as the roots cutting, that is quoted separately and you decide. We would rather tell you a repair is coming than clear it, take the money, and see you again in eight months.
Local engineers across Glasgow and a 50-mile radius. Tap your town for drain root removal response times in your area.
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The camera work that finds the joint the roots came in through, with footage you keep.
Learn moreSeals the joint from inside so the roots have nothing to grow back through. No digging.
Learn moreScours the cut material out and takes the run back to full bore.
Learn moreFor runs where root damage has gone past sealing and the pipe has failed structurally.
Learn moreReviews
Real reviews from Glasgow households and businesses we've helped.
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