London City Drains - Drainage news

Drainage London | CCTV Drain survey footage - London Drainage Service

We’ve added a report of a recent drainage survey to the City Drains London website.

In this example we inspected a 4 inch PVC drain pipe at a house in London - the customer was suffering a blocked drain which needed immediate attention. 

The cctv drain survey showed that the blocked drain was caused by a kinked pipe which caused water retention and flooding.

Drain repair was possible by excavating the blocked pipe, and realigning the drain to the correct angle, allowing the drain to flow freely and preventing any futher drain blockages.

You can see the full cctv drain survey footage, plus the drain schematic and drainage service report by visiting the London drain inspections page on our website.

Thames Water is proposing to upgrade its sludge treatment facilities at Riverside Sewage Treatment Works, in Rainham – which will enable the plant to treat the solid waste left behind after the sewage treatment process and turn it into enough renewable energy to power the entire site.

The proposed upgrade will be located entirely within the existing sewage treatment works and will involve refurbishing existing digestion tanks and building new sludge thickening, de-watering and storage facilities. All measures are being taken to ensure the works will have no effect on odour.  All process tanks and sludge storage areas will be covered or enclosed in buildings.

Sludge will be treated through anaerobic digestion, whereby solid waste is broken down in enclosed tanks in the absence of oxygen. The process generates renewable energy, in the form of biogas (methane) which can be used to run engines and turbines for heating and electricity. The process also leaves behind a nutrient-rich solid which can be used as fertiliser.

A planning application will be submitted in May 2008 and subject to approval, construction will begin in early 2009 with works due for completion by 2010.

Investment plea for London sewers

 
Investment is urgently needed to upgrade London’s drains & sewers and reduce the threat posed by climate change and flash floods, experts have warned.

The severity and regularity of flash floods is expected to increase as more of London’s green spaces are concreted over and the population rises.

In 1859 Sir Joseph Bazalgette used 318 million bricks to create an underground grid to transfer London’s sewage to the east of the city.
 
It is now processed and turned into electricity at treatment works in Beckton and Crossness.
London’s unusual combined sewer system deals both with water flushed from homes and incoming rainfall from drains.

Climate change is expected to increase the regularity and severity of flash floods, placing greater demands on the system.

This will be compounded by the vanishing areas of green spaces able to soak up rainfall and a 800,000 population increase predicted by 2016.

Here’s another movie of a blocked drain London City Drains cctv survey.

In this example our London drain engineer was making a cctv survey of a 4 inch diameter earthenware/cast iron drain at a home in London.

As the cctv survey footage shows, the drain is misaligned, meaning the section of drain pipe must be replaced to prevent a future drain blockage or flooding problem.

The drain survey video footage, drain survey inspection report and drain schematic can be viewed on our london cctv drain inspection survey page.

Alternatively you can download just the drain inspection video by clicking on this link:

Off set drain, cctv drain inspection video - Greater London

London’s Sewer System - Blocked drain london - london drainage history, advice and tips

Over 2,800 million litres of waste produced every day
349 sewage treatment works
Over 2,400 sewage pumping stations
Over 67,700 km (42,000 miles) of sewers
Europe’s largest sewage treatment works at Beckton, East London

Hot cooking fat solidifies when poured down the plughole. Each year over 1000 tonnes of fat cause 36,000 sewer and drain blockages. Dispose of the fat by letting it set in an old tin, and put in a bin.
 
Until around 1800 the river Thames had supported a large fishing industry, which caught and sold a wide range of species, including lobsters and salmon. But by 1805 only 150,000 cesspits had been built to serve London’s one million inhabitants and within a decade many householders had begun to illegally connect their overflowing cesspits to surface water drains which flowed into the river Thames, the main source of drinking water for London. The rising tide of sewage rendered it virtually lifeless - the river began to smell, especially in hot weather.
The state of the river became a well-publicised scandal that resulted in the Public Health Act of 1848. This established the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. The new Commission quickly ordered a major survey of the London sewers, which were found to be inadequate and in major need of repair.

Outbreaks of cholera had occurred in 1832 but in 1849 a further outbreak, during which the death toll was estimated at 2,000 Londoners per week, prompted Dr John Snow and William Farr to conduct a study of the Broad Street Public Well in Golden Square, Soho. As a result, they realised contaminated water caused cholera and not “foul vapours” in the air as had been widely believed.

In an attempt to curb disease the Government passed the 1852 Metropolis Water Act. This introduced a number of measures including making the slow-sand filtration of water and the covering of service reservoirs mandatory and also ensuring that, in order to avoid proximity to sewage outfalls, the abstraction of water only took place above Teddington Lock on the River Thames.

In around 1854, the cash-strapped Commission of Sewers was replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works whose Chief Engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, devised a sewage interception scheme designed to solve London’s sewage problem. Bazalgette planned to construct large intercepting sewers to collect flows from the existing river outfalls and convey the waste to East London. Here it could be stored in storage lagoons for up to 9 hours and released into the River on the ebb tide flow to the sea.

Bazalgette’s scheme was initially rejected on the grounds of cost, but in June 1858 the stench from the river Thames became so bad that it became impossible to continue business in the Houses of Parliament and action was demanded. As a result, the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, rushed through an act allowing the Board of Works to raise the money to pay for the works by imposing charges on Londoners. Bazalgette’s plans had been so well honed that he was able to begin at once and by 1874 the system was fully operational.

We’ve uploaded a cctv video of a drain inspection survey to the London City Drains website.

In this case, the surveyed drain was a earthenware/PVC construct - we found the drain to be in good condition with some silt build up.

You can download the drain survey video from the London City Drains homepage, or direct by clicking on this link:

London City Drains, drain inspection cctv survey video