Drainage Services Across Cornwall

In eastern Cornwall — Saltash, Liskeard, Launceston, Looe, Bodmin and the surrounding parishes — drainage is shaped by granite and slate geology, steep coastal valleys and a very high proportion of properties that are not connected to a mains sewer.

Thin soils over rock make excavation expensive and soakaways unpredictable: water can run away instantly through fissured ground in one field and refuse to percolate at all in the next. Many older cottages drain through granite-sided or clay pipe runs laid by hand generations ago, sometimes discharging to watercourses that no longer meet the General Binding Rules. Coastal locations add salt corrosion, sand ingress and tide-locked outfalls, and the seasonal population swing at holiday properties overloads septic tanks that cope perfectly well in winter. Cornwall also has extensive former mining ground where old workings and made ground cause localised settlement.

Percolation testing, CCTV inspection and honest advice on whether a system can be repaired or needs replacing matter more here than anywhere; we survey before quoting, not after.