Drainage Services Across Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire mixes Victorian brick terraces in Bedford and Luton with vast post-war and modern estates in Milton Keynes' commuter belt, Houghton Regis and the new-build fringes of Biggleswade and Wixams. Each generation of building brings its own drainage faults, and the county's heavy Oxford and Gault clay subsoils work against all of them.

Shrinkable clay swells in winter and shrinks in dry summers, and that seasonal movement is the single biggest cause of cracked and displaced joints in older clay drainage around Bedford, Luton and Dunstable. On newer estates the pipework is plastic and structurally sound, but shared private drains, shallow falls and construction debris left in the run cause repeat blockages. Bedfordshire also has a long brickmaking and market-garden history around Stewartby and the Marston Vale, so ground made up over old workings can settle unevenly and pull drain runs out of line.

A CCTV survey tells us which of those it is before anything is dug. Where the clay is the culprit we usually reline rather than excavate, and where soakaways are failing on clay subsoil we percolation test properly rather than simply rebuilding a soakaway that was always undersized.