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We cover : Cambridge, Peterborough, Huntingdon, Newmarket, Royston, Bedford, St Neots, St Ives, Ely, March, Wisbech, Yaxley, Papworth and surrounding areas.

News

Rootball removal in Girton to clear blocked drain

Blocksaway Ltd. attended a house in Girton where the client had experienced huge problems with their foul drains constantly blocking. Steve soon discovered this was caused by the worst case of tree root ingress he had ever come across, and having high pressure water jetted the pipework to remove the roots and restore it to full bore there was no alternative but to get very wet and remove the root balls from the manhole by hand. Our client was so grateful he paid Steve for an extra hour to get some new wellingtons!

You can view some images of the offending Rootball via the link below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81004116@N00/7397008088/in/set-72157630182868586/

Blocksaway Ltd join The Guild Of Master Craftsmen

Blocksaway Ltd are pleased to announce that they have been accepted as a member of The Guild Of Master Craftsmen. details can be found here.

Blocksaway Ltd in India

Chairman of Blocksaway Ltd., Kevin Doyle, returned last December from a 1400 mile car rally in S. India from Goa to Kerala via the W. Ghat mountains through Karnataka and the tea plantatations of Tamil Nadu; the car was an “ Ambi” essentially our old Morris Oxford still manufactured in India. He raised £4,500 (including sponsorship from Blocksaway Ltd), which has been split equally between the English charity The Rainbow Trust, which helps families with terminally ill children, and an Indian charity Adventure Ashram , which funds education and medical projects for the poor children of S.W.India.

Kevin in India

Kevin said the most important instrument in the car was the horn and that the driving style in India was extremely “exciting” (read : dangerous) but everyone accepted it as normal and there was no road rage!

Blocksaway clears church drains in Huntingdon

All Saints Church Huntingdon

All Saints Church Huntingdon

All Saints’ Church in the Market Square, Huntingdon had flooding problems during heavy rainfall. The churchwardens called in Blocksaway in October to sort out the problems ; it took just 4 hours to clean every downpipe,gulley and drain using a high pressure water jet at 3000psi; some of the problems were caused by tree roots which were removed.

All Saints’ is predominantly a 15th century building in the perpendicular style but there was originally a saxon church on this site in the very centre of Huntingdon.

Blocksaway chairman, Kevin Doyle, has a particular interest in church buildings, being a churchwarden himself and having acted as grant secretary for Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust for over 10 years.

Important Pricing Announcement

Since its formation 2 years ago Blocksaway Ltd. has always maintained an ethical approach to its emergency drain cleaning operations, assuring our potential clients that ”we will never take financial advantage of those in urgent need of help”.

In line with this policy, we have decided to charge our normal weekday rate of £89 for emergency call-outs at weekends and in the evenings as well.

This competitive rate is not subject to the addition of VAT or any other hidden charges.

Third Time Lucky!

A Mrs. D. H. of Yaxley, nr. Peterborough had the ultimate nightmare when she went to work on Tuesday morning 13th September ’11;as she approached her car she dropped her only keys through the grating of a roadside drain.

She called a well known national drain cleaning company and was quoted £120+ vat! Another refused to come out saying they were not allowed to lift roadside gullies. Third time lucky she rang Blocksaway Ltd and we came out to her straight away retrieving the keys for a nominal charge of £30(and no vat!).

A Diamond in the waste?

A director of Blocksaway reminisces on the occasion when as a director of a national competitor he was asked by an insurance company to send an engineer to a pub in Lincolnshire, where the landlady claimed she had lost a large diamond from her wedding ring down the waste whilst washing up the beer glasses.

All 10 yards of 2” pipework and the bottle trap were carefully dismantled , cleaned and checked and the gulley outside to which the pipework led carefully emptied, but no sign of the diamond!

The engineer reported back that the ring clasp appeared rather too cheap to have held a diamond, but we don’t know the eventual decision of the insurance company.

Where there is muck . . .

Once we were called out to a small business in Cambourne, Cambridgeshire because it had been discovered that someone had attempted to steal £500, but rather than be caught redhanded with the money they had flushed it down the toilet, leaving a few tell tale notes in the bowl.

We asked the proprietor where the next manhole was and were told categorically it was outside the toilet window; we blocked off the drain outlet from this manhole with a bung and pressurized the toilet bowl to push the remainder of the money through—Result: absolutely nothing: it was the wrong manhole!

Luckily the interceptor just before the main sewer was partially blocked and the money was found floating inside it.

A total of £490 was retrieved and dried out by the proprietor, but we’re not sure what he said to the bank when he paid it in!

Mill Road Cambridge to close for sewer repairs

Mill Road, Cambridge which has had continual recent problems with roadworks will be closed for sewer repairs in April for approximately 2 weeks. The closure is planned from April 11 to April 22. THe works is to be carried out by Anglian Water. A spokesman said of the problem which will close a section between Tenison Road and Gwydir Street:

“Although the main sewer is flowing well at the moment, the damage to the two connecting pipes means they could block up. Unfortunately that means we will need to replace this short section of sewer.

“The work should only take two weeks and we will do all we can to keep disruption to a minimum. Diversions will be in place and there will still be access to the shops along this section of the road.”

“Nevertheless, some disruption is inevitable and we are sorry but it is important that we do this work.

“The re-lining work which uncovered the damage was all about preventing problems and was completed without any disruption and without the need to close the road.

“It is a shame this problem means we will now need a further short closure, but by acting to fix this damage now we will also reduce the chance of much bigger problems in the future.”

Full story
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Cambridges-Mill-Road-to-close-for-sewer-repairs.htm

Blocked drain in St Neots leaves no alternative but to dig

We tried everything to clear an overflowing sink waste in St Neots, Cambridgeshire,  including our specialist electromechanical equipment and using  a CCTV inspection camera from the neighbours’ inspection chambers to try to ascertain where the blocked drain actually ran.  We found that there was absolutely no other access point to our client’s drain,  so we traced its path from the gulley with our sonic drain tracer and dug a 5 foot deep hole at a convenient point along its length.

When we came to pierce a hole in the uncovered drainage pipe to create an access point, the fountain of  sewage under pressure was quite impressive and unfortunate for some!  But we were then able to remove a huge quantity of offending tree roots, clear the blockage and inspect the drain with our CCTV camera. Some video footage is below.

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