What we were called out for
Mark got in touch after years of hearing rodents climbing the soil pipe. The pipe is boxed in and runs up through his living room and the bedroom above, so the noise carried through the house — though nothing ever got into the rooms themselves. Several pest control firms had been out over that time and none of them had stopped it. He asked us to put a camera down the drainage system and find out what was actually going on.
What we did
The survey found a break on the swept bend at the foot of the soil pipe, with wastewater escaping into the ground beneath the house. That break was how they were getting into the pipe, and why treating the rodents themselves had never solved anything.
The break sat under a concrete slab laid over a suspended breeze block floor, so it had to be reached from inside. We sheeted and taped off the working area so the rest of the living room stayed clean, marked out, cut the slab, and lifted the breeze block floor to expose the defect.
We repaired the break and backfilled with pea gravel so the swept bend is properly supported rather than left to settle again, then reinstated the suspended floor and the concrete slab over the top. The line running out to the manhole in the back garden was cleared with high-pressure jetting — years of waste build-up and scale had collected in it. A second CCTV survey and a fluorescent dye test confirmed the repair was sound and everything was running where it should. Finally we fitted a rodent non-return valve in the outside manhole, so rats can't use the sewer connection to get back in.
The result
The rodents were never really a pest problem. They were a drainage problem — a broken pipe was letting them into the system, and no amount of treatment was going to fix a hole in a pipe. The break is repaired and supported, the line is clear, the floor is back as it was, and the non-return valve closes the route up from the sewer.
Project photos
