Deep In...

Late on Wednesday evening we discovered that our toilet wasn't flushing away properly. None of our ad-hoc diy attempts to fix this seemed to achieve anything, so first thing on Thursday we called in the 'drain people' from up on the north coast.

And what an adventure we had! Jetting didn't seem to work, so a camera was sent up the pipe to take a look around. This revealed the cause of the problem - a long-buried (and to us completely unknown) access chamber part way along, the lid of which had tumbled into the waste pipe, causing a build-up of waste that eventually led to the complete blockage we experienced on Wednesday evening.

The chamber was soon located from ground level, and a bit of breaking, digging and lifting with a spade and a crowbar got us to what you see here.

Not surprisingly, the chamber turned out to contain around a cubic metre of decaying faeces and toilet paper with a definite whiff of parmesan cheese...

What irresponsible builder (before our time!) covered this up and concreted it over? (At least they didn't actually build the garage right over it, or we'd have had a hell of a problem on our hands.)

My next garden project - re-work and resurface the whole outside area between our bathroom and our garage - including, building up the hatch so it remains visible - and accessible - whenever it might be needed.

Congratulations once again to A1 Clear Drainage for another excellent and thoroughly professional piece of work!