East London drainage: what we see across E and EC postcodes

Low ground and a high water table

Much of E3, E14 and E16 sits on former marsh and reclaimed dock land, close to sea level and with groundwater near the surface. Two consequences follow.

Drainage runs have very little fall to work with, so anything that reduces the bore, fat, silt, a slightly displaced joint, produces a slow drain long before it produces a blockage. And groundwater infiltration through failed joints adds flow the system was never sized for, which is why some runs surcharge in wet weather with no blockage present at all.

The same mechanism, in its river-facing version, is covered in riverside London drainage.

Warehouse and industrial conversions

Shoreditch, Hackney Wick, Bow and Wapping are full of buildings that were never residential. A warehouse had one drainage connection for a yard and a washroom; the conversion asks it to serve twenty flats.

What we find is retro-fitted pipework taking long horizontal routes to reach the original connection, boxed-in runs with no access point along their length, and pumped waste where a lower floor sits below the outgoing invert. Every one of those is fine until something needs reaching. See basement flats and pumped drainage.

Catering density

Between Brick Lane, Kingsland Road and the City fringe, east London carries an extraordinary concentration of kitchens, many of them below flats and many in units converted from retail without a grease trap sized for the volume.

Fat from one kitchen affects the whole run, and residents upstairs usually feel it first. Where a commercial and a residential connection share pipework, arguing about the bill takes longer than clearing it, which is why we record the cause as standard. Background in grease management and commercial drainage in the City.

New build next to old

East London has had more construction in the last fifteen years than anywhere else in the capital. New developments connect into a network laid in the nineteenth century, and the connection point is often where the trouble starts: a poorly formed junction, a run built over during groundworks, or silt and construction debris washed into a live sewer.

If a property has had building work nearby and a drain started misbehaving afterwards, the two are worth linking rather than treating as coincidence. See build-over agreements.

Postcode coverage

We work across E1, E2, E3, E5, E8, E9 and E14, and EC1, EC2, EC3 and EC4, twenty four hours a day.

Postcode pages: E1, E8, E14, EC1. Full list on coverage by postcode.

If the problem is on your doorstep, we cover blocked drains in E5.