Drainage Services in Wells

Wells takes its name from the springs that rise in the cathedral grounds, and those springs are central to local drainage. Water emerging from the Mendip limestone keeps groundwater levels high in the city centre, and any drain with open joints there takes in clean spring water continuously, filling the system and washing silt into the invert rather than carrying foul water away.

The cathedral precinct and medieval streets have some of the oldest drainage we work on, including shallow clay and in places stone-built runs beneath listed buildings and the historic water channels that still run through the streets. Excavation in that setting is heavily restricted. On the Mendip slopes above the city, limestone brings karst behaviour — swallets and fissures where surface water can disappear quickly — while the low ground towards Coxley and the Levels edge is heavy clay with poor percolation and a high winter water table.

For Wells we CCTV survey first, principally to distinguish spring-fed groundwater infiltration from blockage, since the two look similar from above ground. High-pressure jetting clears silt and root ingress from the older runs, no-dig lining is usually the only viable repair in the cathedral precinct and conservation area, and new drainage on the Mendip limestone is designed carefully given how unpredictably water moves through fissured rock.