Whilst these acts of god can strike at anytime there are a number of things you can do to try to safeguard your home from flash floods:

Prevent water from entering your home

If you are expecting heavy rains or storms to hit your area, particularly if you live in a flood-prone area, you should cover your doors, or even windows, with metal sheets, sandbags, or plywood. You can also use silicone sealant to ensure that water will not enter your home. These measures will not last for days but they may hold back a short lasting flood and keep your possessions dry.

Shut off your utilities

You should remember to turn off all your utilities, such as gas, electricity and even water, at the mains. You should also remember to unplug all your electrical appliances and store them at high places, on the second floor, if possible. Water ingress into homes often rises several feet but this will mean that the second floor is dry and any items you have stored there will not be impacted.

Be mindful of your appliances and furniture

You need to ensure that your valuable furniture and appliances are kept on high areas or upstairs. If you do not have a second floor as you live in a bungalow, you can just raise such items on blocks or bricks. Be sure to remove carpets, curtains and even internal doors. Store them all in high places to ensure that they are protected from water.

Important papers, pictures and other personal items should also be placed on higher grounds, particularly on the second floor of your house. Also store them in waterproof containers such as food storage containers. If not, you should put important papers in sealed plastic bags to ensure that they are protected from water.

Make sure that all objects outside your house, such as rakes, are kept in a safe place. Floodwater can easily float these items, which can pose danger to others. Also put more valuable items that could float away into a locked building such as you garage. Even a wheelbarrow could float away if left outside whereas it will not move if kept in a garage and will not be harmed by the flood water.

If a flood warning is issued

Here are important things you need to do once you a flood warning has been issued:

• Information is crucial during situations like these. Thus, you need to always listen to the radio for announcements and updates.
• Be sure to cooperate fully with local authorities and emergency services. If they require you to evacuate, follow them and do not dillydally as you will put yourself and your helpers at risk.
• Since electricity will almost certainly be unavailable, you must ensure that you do all the things you need to do during the day. It is much more difficult and unsafe to do things in the dark. Also get batteries for your torches and know where they are.
• Share the information with your neighbors, particularly the old people, so that they can also prepare themselves.
• Be sure to stay inside your house. Floodwater can kill, especially when it is raging, so do not attempt to go out. It is important to note that rapid flowing water that is six inches high could make you fall, while two feet of water could make your car float.
• Ensure that your pets and cars are in a safe location. Once you heard of flood warning, you should stay on the second floor of your house.
• There maybe objects floating in the water, so do not attempt to swim through raging flood. You can either be swept away or be knocked over by objects that are in the water.
• Floodwater may be dirty and contaminated with sewage, so you should avoid contact if possible. It would be a shame that you survived the flooding, but fell ill because of contaminated water.
• River bridges, sea defenses, and riverbanks are very dangerous places to be in during floods, so be sure to steer away from them if possible. There have been many cases wherein floodwater have destroyed or collapsed bridges and defenses.

Preventative Measures

There are some simple preventative measures that you can take to reduce the likelihood of a blocked drain whether it is through structural defects or foreign objects and they are listed below: -

• Regularly remove any hairs that get trapped in the waste plug hole.
• Keep small objects such as combs, medicine bottles and toilet rolls away from places where they could accidentally fall into the toilet.
• Regularly flush the wash basin and bath or shower pipework with hot water and a disinfectant to clear soap residue and prevent build up over time
• Don’t flush away large and disposable items such as sanitary towels, nappies or product wrapping as they can become caught in the drainage pipe.
• Do not dispose of waste food scraps and cuttings down the kitchen sink. These are much better composted. If any items do fall into the sink pull the vegetable material out of the plug hole, do not try to poke through as you could impact the blockage making it harder to remove.
• Never dispose of cooking fats down the drain system. As they hit cold water they will solidify. If there is absolutely no alternative you should dilute and emulsify the fats by mixing them with hot water and of detergent. Keep the water running for a minute after you have done this to keep a clear water flow.

Regular Maintenance

There are also a set of regular maintenance activities which can reduce the likelihood of a drains problem.

• Check the house roof gutters and rain downpipes twice a year. Take care when working at height but remove any accumulated debris and leaves with a trowel
• Regularly check that your drains are free-flowing by periodically lifting the inspection covers and make sure that these can easily be accessed
• Keep external drain grids free of fallen leaves, autumn moss and other garden materials. As with the internal drains you should regularly wash external drains with hot water and disinfectant.

For complete peace of mind, particularly if you are running a business you can request a regular drain surveys and get your drainage system checked regularly by a CCTV drain inspection service. This will give early warning of any potential blockages and also enables you to keep an eye on the structural condition of the drainage pipework. Remember that drain leaks can result in environmental pollution in contravention of section 85 of the Water Resources Act 1991.

At times it can be preferred to using other means to clear a drain such as drain rods. Over vigorous use of drain rods can cause serious damage to pipework bends, traps and gullies if care is not taken. Also high pressure water jetting can be more effective than drain rodding in breaking up the blockage debris and washing it clear of the pipe.

Water Jetting for home and business

High-pressure water jetting by a trained professional is a quick and efficient way to clean home drains. The water is injected into the drain without any need to dig up sections of the drain pipe and all the inconvenience that this brings. High-Pressure water jetting can also be used to remove roots which have invaded the drains by using specialised cutting tools driven by the water jets.

Restaurants, launderettes and other commercial establishments can require frequent high-pressure water jetting to remove the accumulation of mineral deposits, grease , sludge, fats and debris or sediment that accumulate in the drains.

Why do drains clog?

Over a period of time deposits such as grease, fat, silt and mineral scale build up on the pipe walls. This accumulated material makes the wall rough reducing the ability of the drain to rapidly move the water it contains. As the water flow slows more materials are deposited worsening the situation. The most effective way to clear the drainage pipes and inspection chambers of these deposits is high pressure water jetting. The high-pressure water spray acts like a sharp knife and cuts the grease off the walls of the pipe. The water used in the process itself creates a high water flow which will flush the sediments down the line.

Drain inspection

With state of the art water jetting ordinary water is propelled under varying amounts of pressure into the drain and this can completely clear the drain or sewer of obstructions. Once this process is completed it is an opportune time to investigate the internal construction of the drain, to ascertain if there is any design reason why deposits are building up, or see if the drain has suffered some earlier damage which is the cause of the problem. Once the blockage is removed, the sewer line can then be examined with a cctv survey to determine where roots are entering the pipe or walls have degenerated and what preventative and restorative maintenance is required.

Suitable soils for a soakaway are ones that are well drained such as well aerated subsoils which are usually brown, yellow or reddish in colour. Examples of subsoils with good percolation characteristics are sand, gravel, chalk, sandy loam and clay loam. It is important that the percolation characteristics are suitable in both summer and winter conditions. Poorly drained or saturated subsoils are often grey or blue in colour. Brown and grey mottling usually indicates periodic saturation. Examples of subsoils with poor percolation characteristics are sandy clay, silty clay and clay.

If you are considering installing a soakaway a preliminary assessment should be carried out including consultation with the
Environment Agency, and local authority to determine the suitability of the site. The natural vegetation on the site should also give an indication of its suitability for a drainage field.

A trial hole should be dug to determine the position of the standing ground water table. The trial hole should be a minimum of 1m2 in area and 2m deep, or a minimum of 1.5m below the invert of the proposed drainage field pipework. The ground water table should not rise to within 1m of the invert level of the proposed effluent distribution pipes. If the test is carried out in summer, the likely winter groundwater levels should be considered. A percolation test should then be carried out to assess the further suitability of proposed area.

Drainage fields or mounds should be designed and constructed to ensure aerobic contact between the liquid effluent and the subsoil. Drainage fields should be constructed using perforated pipe, laid in trenches of a uniform gradient which should be not steeper than 1/200. Pipes should be laid on a 300mm layer of clean shingle or broken stone graded between 20mm and 50mm. Trenches should be filled to a level 50mm above the pipe and covered with a layer of geotextile to prevent the entry of silt. The remainder of the trench can be filled with soil; the distribution pipes should be laid at a minimum depth of 500mm below the surface. Drainage trenches should be from 300mm to 900mm wide, with areas of undisturbed ground 2m wide being maintained between parallel trenches (see Diagram 1).

An inspection chamber should be installed between the septic tank and the drainage field. Drainage fields should be set out as a continuous loop fed from the inspection chamber

Surface Water Drainage is governed by the Building Regulations 2000 which state that surface water soakaways should not be built:

• within 5m of a building or road or in areas of unstable land
• in ground where the water table reaches the bottom of the device at any time of the year
• sufficiently far from any drainage fields, drainage mounds or other soakaways so that the overall soakage capacity of the ground is not exceeded and the effectiveness of any drainage field is not impaired
• where the presence of any contamination in the runoff could result in pollution of groundwater source or resource.

Prior to installing the soakaway a percolation test should be carried out to assess the suitability of the proposed area.

A septic tank is a two or three chamber system, which retains sewerage from a property for sufficient time to allow solids to form into sludge at the base of the tank. The remaining liquid drains from the tank by means of an outlet pipe. This effluent is normally disposed of by soakage into the ground via a soakaway, provided that the disposal does not generate a pollution risk to surface waters or groundwater resources.

For domestic properties the capacity of the septic tank should be calculated using the following formula:

Capacity of tank in litres = ( 180 * number of people in the house ) + 2000

For non-domestic properties the following per capita sewerage volumes (litres per day) should be used:

Boarding School 180
Campsites 75
Caravans 120
Day School 50
Domestic 180
Factories 65
Hospitals 450
Hotels 200
Offices 55
Public Houses 15
Rest Homes 300
Restaurants 25

The satisfactory biological performance of the sewerage system relies on routine desludging and maintenance. A regular desludging and servicing programme should be established to ensure that the system continues to work efficiently and comply with the conditions of the discharge consents.

Desludging should be carried out every 12 months by an operator registered for the carriage of sewage waste by the Environmental Regulator. A check on the nature of the effluent draining from the tank can indicate whether it needs emptying. The effluent will normally be light grey in colour but, as the sludge content of the tank increases, the effluent will increasingly contain dark solids.

Cesspools, septic tanks and package treatment plants should ideally be desludged when they are half full of sludge to maximise efficiency. Approximately 1/6 of the sludge should be left in the tank to maintain the community of bacteria that digest the sewage.

In an ideal world every time a tank or treatment plant is “serviced” effluent samples should be taken and then analysed to determine the efficiency of the system.

As previously mentioned septic tanks should only be used in conjunction with a form of secondary treatment such as a drainage field, drainage mound or constructed wetland.

In accordance with the guidance note PPG4 the septic tank and soakaway area should be sited:

• Not less than 10 metres from any ditch, drain or water course
• Not closer than 15 metres to any dwelling
• At least 50 metres from the point of abstraction of any ground water supply (any well or borehole)
• Not in any Zone 1 ground water protection zone
• Sufficient vehicular access to allow tank emptying

Under the provisions of the Water Resources Act 1991 in England and Wales, the Control of Pollution Act 1974 (as amended) in Scotland and the Water Act 1972 in Ireland, a consent from the relevant Agency is required for any discharge of sewerage effluent into “controlled waters”. A consent may also be required for any / all discharges into a soakaway.

Drains degrade over time

One of most serious home drainage problems, that can affect all types of property is that posed by leaking drains. As time passes drains and sewers can deteriorate leading to structural problems through wall collapse or ingress from plant roots / builders shovels. Most Drains can be tested and surveyed by the house holder fairly easily if there are adequate inspection chambers, and if they are not blocked. At this point you ought to review the inspection chambers in your home, are they easy to access or has someone erected a fence panel over one?

Some types of houses, for example: Victorian Terraced Houses, have generic potential drainage problems and need regular inspections to identify maintenance requirements before an emergency happens.

Homeowner Drain Inspection

Inspecting your drains simply involves lifting manhole covers and running water through the drain runs from the taps within your property, you should then observing the water flows throughout the drainage system. This can be accomplished by any capable DIY practitioner with care , look after your back and toes when opening a drain cover and ensure that nothing falls in including small children.

Look in the chamber, if any of the following examples can be observed then there might be a cause for concern: -
- Tree roots growing in the chamber and connecting pipes.
- Stagnant water lying in the drainage channel rather than flowing through the system.
In particular if you see black and possibly foul smelling water then there is almost certainly a blockage problem

If you have any concerns following your own home drain inspection it might be worthwhile engaging a drainage specialist company to carry out a thorough cctv drain survey to establish the true cause of the problem.

What are the benefits of CCTV Surveys

A CCTV Survey can be carried out with little fuss and disruption but they quickly establish the facts. A CCTV survey involves sending a camera down the your sewer or drain and making a video recording of the results. A CCTV survey will not determine that a drain is watertight or leaking, but it will show and locate areas of damage or blockage. Reviewing the CCTV survey the drainage engineer can precisely pinpoint the problem area without the need for expensive excavations. At this point a repair plan can be established and whilst a hole might need to be dug it will be at the exact location of the problem thereby minimising subsequent costs and disruption.

Pre Home Purchase Surveys

Camera cctv surveys are not only used for fault finding once a problem is suspected, it is now becoming common practice for potential home purchasers to schedule a drain survey before completing on the sale to identify any potential and expensive problems. Underground drains might be invisible but they should be considered as part of the overall purchase assessment particularly if you are buying a new home. Drainage systems can be very complex and repair work can be expensive if it involves digging up large areas of land. Acknowledging the potential high cost of drain repairs, CCTV surveys can be cost effective investments and pay for themselves many times over.

Get expert help today

To contact Dyno Rod for a CCTV survey whether you have a blockage or want a pre purchase home assessment, please telephone 0845 026 0994.

If you have a problem that needs professional help call Dynorod Soakaway services on 0845 0260994.

When called out to a property where they are not connected to mains drainage and the customer has a septic tank the following questions are first asked by the drains contractor and they may help you in sorting out the problem.

Does water collect on the surface of the ground in the area of the septic tank soakaway?

This is a sign that the soakaway has failed, and is not allowing the untreated effluent to drain away effectively.

Do the drains ever become blocked and cause a ‘backup’?

Again, this can be a sign that the soakaway is not functioning correctly, is blocked by solids, and the untreated effluent is not able to drain away.

Are there offensive odours from the area of the septic tank or cesspool?

A septic tank does not treat sewage, but merely settles solids, and then allows the remaining untreated liquid to drain away. A cesspool simply contains the effluent and requires regular emptying. Both methods often result in nauseous smells.

Does the septic tank drain into a watercourse or ditch?

Some older installations may drain into a nearby watercourse or ditch, allowing untreated effluent to be discharged straight into the environment. This is illegal and the householder could be prosecuted.

Do you have to empty your septic tank more than once a year?

If you do, this is an indication that the tank is undersized for your property and is not functioning effectively. This in turn makes it expensive to operate and can lead to solids blocking the soakaway.

Do you rarely, if ever, empty your septic tank or cesspool?

If this is the case, then your tank may be damaged and/or leaking untreated effluent into the ground and therefore polluting the surrounding property and environment.

Have you extended or are planning to extend the property?

A septic tank or cesspool is designed to suit a specific number of people within a property. If this is increased then it is probable that the tank will require upgrading.

If the answer to one or more of the above questions the solution is to either install a new septic tank or arrange for the installation of a package sewerage treatment plant such as a Rotating Biological Contactor (RBC).

Remember if you have a problem with a soakaway or septic tank that needs professional help call Dynorod Soakaway services on 0845 0260994.

All clay and concrete pipes are classed as rigid pipes and are designed and installed as such. In general engineering terms pitch fibre pipes were the first of the “flexible pipes” to be installed, however, in the 1960’s the engineers / civil engineering industry did not understand or appreciate the difference between flexible pipe design and installation and rigid pipe design. This has now led to a lot of the pitch fibre pipes to deform and collapse causing both serviceability and blockage problems.

The cured-in-place lining (CIPP) has greater ring stiffness than the pitch fibre pipe and therefore gives added support to resist deformation and other common problems. The same linings are used to renovate clay and concrete pipes within the water industry around the world and are designed and tested to last for 50 years providing a long lasting solution to a pitch fibre drain problem.

All Dynorod CIPP linings comply with the basic requirements of:

• BS EN 13566-4:2002: Part 4: Plastic piping systems for the renovation of underground non-pressure drainage and sewerage networks – Lining with cured-in-place pipes.
• Water Industry Specification (WIS) 4-34-04: Specification for renovation of gravity sewers by lining with cured-in-place pipes: March 1995: Issue 2, published by the Water Research Centre (WRc Plc).

Each individual lining is designed, in accordance with the Sewerage Rehabilitation Manual (SRM), to withstand the long term effect of external hydrostatic pressures (i.e ground water) acting on the lining over a 50 year period.

If you need renovation work carried out on your Pitch Fibre pipes call Dynorod on 0845 026 0994 for a free quotation from the drains experts.

Dual Access (Manhole to Manhole)

In general, the patented No-Dig method used by Dyno-Rod to renovate pitch fibre pipes are as follows:

1. A steel cable is introduced through the centre of the pitch fibre pipes.
2. A steel reformer / cutter is then pulled through the pipe to remove any surface blistering or delamination.
3. The steel reformer is then winched through the pipe several times so as to re-round the deformed sections of the pipeline.
4. Finally, a polyester lining is pulled through the pipe, inverted and then cured in place restoring the pipeline back to its original shape.

Single Access (Manhole or Excavation)

In general, the patented No-Dig method used by Dyno-Rod is as follows:

1. The re-rounding head is attached to both a steel rod and a winch cable.
2. The head is then pushed through the pitch fibre pipe using the steel rods.
3. The head may also be vibrated through a heavily deformed section (minimum diameter is 50mm) by attaching a kango drill to the end of the steel rod.
4. The steel rod is rotated anti-clockwise to unlock the re-rounding head when located at the correct position.
5. The re-rounding head is then winched back to the launch manhole re-rounding the pitch fibre pipe.
6. The process may be repeated several times to re-round the deformed sections of pipe.
7. Finally, a polyester lining is pulled through the pipe, inverted and then cured in place restoring the pipeline back to its original shape.

With respect to the rehabilitation of pitch fibre pipes other organisations are now offering similar services, some of which are in breach of the patent and as such are being contacted by the relevant authorities.

The first pitch fibre repair was carried out in Trivills Park, Liskeard, Cornwall in the spring of 1996 in conjunction with Royal Sun Alliance. Since 1996 Dyno-Rod has renovated over 150km of pitch fibre pipes and is now an accepted approach recognised by the environmental health people, in Cornwall, in restoring full flow conditions.

Since this time a spokes person from Royal Sun Alliance has declared that “Pitch fibre pipe drainage problems have been increasing steadily over the past few years and are proving expensive to solve, but the insitu technique is offering us huge savings, sometimes more than 50% compared with standard excavations.”

Call Dynorod on 0845 026 0994 for a free quotation from the drains experts.