Crowder Plumbing & Drainage · established 1998
01632 960 417Burst pipes, blocked drains, no hot water. Someone answers the phone at three in the morning, and it is the person who will drive out.
Answering 24 hours, every day of the year.
Two vans on the road overnight. If both are out we say so on the call and give you a time, rather than a slot that we already know we will miss.
What it costs, before we come out
Every rate is on this page. The call-out covers the first thirty minutes on site including diagnosis; after that it is by the half hour. We do not quote a price on the phone for work we have not seen, and we do not charge more because it is your bathroom ceiling that is coming down. The full rate card has the rest of it — minimum charges, what a survey includes, and how a job gets priced once it stops being an hour's work.
| When | Hours | Call-out | Each half hour after |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekday | 08:00—18:00 | £78 | £39 |
| Weekday evening | 18:00—22:00 | £112 | £52 |
| Night | 22:00—08:00 | £164 | £68 |
| Saturday | 08:00—18:00 | £112 | £52 |
| Sunday and bank holidays | any | £164 | £68 |
| Parts | trade price + 15% |
| Drain jetting, up to 2 hours | £240 |
| CCTV drain survey, with report | £190 |
| Parking, congestion, permits | at cost, receipted |
| Waste removal | included |
If we cannot fix it
You pay the call-out and nothing else, and we write down what we found and what it needs, so the next trade does not start from scratch and charge you for it.
If we made it worse
We come back and put it right at our cost. Public liability cover is £2m; the certificate goes out with every invoice.
One in forty
A 100 mm foul drain has to fall about 1 in 40. Steeper and the water runs away and leaves the solids behind. Shallower and nothing moves at all. It is the number the whole trade turns on, and it is why most blocked drains are not blocked by what went down them but by how they were laid.
The run down the side of this page is laid to it. Every leg that crosses between two sections drops one unit for forty along, at any screen width, and the water in it only moves because of that. The last rule below is the exception: dead level, with the standing water on it. That is what we find under a drain that blocks every winter.
We check fall before we jet. A drain that blocks twice in a year has a gradient problem or a broken pipe, and clearing it again is a way of charging you twice for the same information.
The CCTV survey reads levels along the run. If the fall is wrong we will tell you what the correction costs and whether it is worth it, which it sometimes is not.
Photographs of finished work, with the fall we laid it at written under each one.
What we come out for
- Burst and leaking pipework, copper and plastic
- Blocked sinks, toilets, gullies and soil stacks
- Blocked and collapsed drains, jetting and survey
- No hot water, no heating, cylinders and immersions
- Taps, valves, traps, ballcocks, cisterns
- Frozen and split pipes, and the tanking after
- Cold water storage tanks, overflows, stopcocks
- Outside taps, washing machine and dishwasher plumbing
What we do not
- Anything on the gas side of a boiler. Different registration, and we will give you the number of someone who holds it
- Boiler warranty work — the manufacturer's own engineer, or you lose the warranty
- Sewage treatment plants and septic tanks
- Bathroom fitting, tiling and plastering as a job on its own
- Anything under the pavement past the boundary — that is the water authority, and it is free
We say this on the phone before we book you in, not on the doorstep after the call-out has started.
Where we go, and how long it takes
Measured from the end of the call to the van on your kerb, averaged over last year. Night figures are slower because there is one van, not two. District by district has the streets each one covers, the depot the van leaves from, and what we hold in stock for it.
| District | Daytime, typical | Night, typical | Parts held in the van |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastgate and the Quays | 35 min | 55 min | Most |
| Barrow Hill | 40 min | 60 min | Most |
| Netherfield | 50 min | 75 min | Common sizes only |
| Ashcombe and the villages | 70 min | 95 min | Common sizes only |
| Past the ring road | by arrangement | not overnight | — |
Before you ring, if water is coming in
- Turn the stopcock off. Kitchen sink cupboard, usually at the back on the rising main. Clockwise. If it will not move, do not force it — go to step 2.
- Open the cold tap at the kitchen sink and then every other cold tap in the house, lowest floor first. That drains the pipework into the sink instead of into the ceiling.
- If water is anywhere near a light fitting, a socket or a consumer unit, switch the electrics off at the main switch and leave them off until someone has looked.
- Put a bucket under it, and photograph it before you mop. It is worth more to your insurer than anything you can say afterwards.
On the call, we will ask
Where the water is, whether the stopcock is off, whether the electrics are off, what floor you are on, and whether it is your building or a flat above. Four of those five decide which van comes.
What not to do
Do not pour drain cleaner into a blockage you have already plunged — it sits on the obstruction and it is still there, hot and caustic, when someone puts a hand in.