Drain Rat Blockers in Watford

Drain Rat Blockers in Watford

Watford is urban and densely built, with a very large flatted sector: purpose-built blocks, converted houses and a great deal of property under managing agents.

Flatted drainage produces the situation this page is about: a system that serves everybody and belongs, as far as any resident is concerned, to nobody.

Images on this page are illustrations only.

Flats and blocks

Nobody’s Drain

In a block, the drainage below ground is communal. A ground-floor flat hearing rats under the floor cannot survey it, cannot fit anything to it and cannot authorise a repair, and the freeholder or managing agent may not know there is a problem at all.

What moves it is a written finding rather than a complaint. A survey that says where rats are entering the system, which pipe that is, and whether it falls to the freeholder or the water company turns a resident's report into a maintenance item an agent can act on.

It also sorts out the question that stalls these jobs: if the defect is beyond the boundary it is the water company's, reported for nothing. If it is within the curtilage it is the freeholder's. Either way it is not the resident's, and having that in writing is what ends the argument.

On the houses, Watford runs Victorian to modern, so the picture covers the lot — perished clay joints in the older terraces, shared runs, and ordinary modern systems on the newer estates.

Short answers

Watford Questions

Going further

Drain and Rat Guides