Drain Rat Blockers in Bletchley

Drain Rat Blockers in Bletchley

Bletchley predates most of the city and its drainage does too: salt-glazed clay, laid in short lengths with mortar joints, much of it eighty years old or more.

Clay is a good material that fails in a predictable way. Joints perish, roots find them, ground movement cracks a length, and a cracked drain is both a leak and a door.

Images on this page are illustrations only.

Clay drainage

The Joint Is Usually the Problem

On an older system the defect is far more often a joint than a pipe. The mortar between two lengths perishes, the gap opens, and what was a sealed run becomes a run with a hole in it at the point where it is also easiest for a rat to get out into the surrounding ground — and then under the floor.

Roots make it worse. A fine root finds a weeping joint, thickens, and levers it apart. That is the single commonest reason an old drain that was fine for decades starts causing trouble.

The other Bletchley-era feature is the interceptor trap, a water-sealed bend at the last chamber that was standard on older property and was meant to stop exactly this. Most have been removed, bypassed or broken over the years, and a broken one is worse than none at all — there is more on that in interceptor traps and older drainage.

Short answers

Bletchley Questions

Going further

Drain and Rat Guides