Drainage Services in Gillingham

Gillingham sits low in the Blackmore Vale where several branches of the Stour converge, on heavy Kimmeridge clay. It is a genuinely flood-prone setting: the town has a recorded history of flooding from the Stour and its tributaries, and drainage here regularly backs up from watercourses that are already high rather than from any fault inside the pipe.

The clay itself causes the structural faults. Seasonal shrink and swell moves pipework, opening joints and cracking older clay runs, and percolation is poor enough that soakaways frequently waterlog and fail. The town has expanded considerably in recent decades, so alongside Victorian clay drainage in the old centre there are large modern estates on plastic pipework with attenuation features, plus long shared private runs where several properties connect before reaching the public sewer.

We use CCTV surveys in Gillingham to separate watercourse backflow, groundwater and blockage before recommending work, because the wrong diagnosis here leads to repeat callouts. Jetting clears silt and root blockages, lining repairs fractured clay without excavating waterlogged gardens, and for rural properties around Bourton and Silton we percolation test septic drainage fields, which is essential in ground that drains as slowly as this.