Buying a house can be a real nightmare; there are so many hoops to jump through and things to check before you sign on that dotted line. Even worse than that though, is what can happen once you’ve exchanged contracts and the house is yours… and then you discover that you’ve inherited a disaster! Remember that Tom Hanks film, The Money Pit? Nobody wants to live that in real life!
How can Blockbusters help you with this?
When you visit a house before buying, you don’t often think about the drains. You probably don’t think to do things like turn on the taps and watch how long it takes for the water to drain away, and without specialist equipment you have no way of knowing if there are cracks or even gaping holes in the underground pipework.
Cracks and holes in pipework are things that can slowly appear over time, so the current owner of a house may not necessarily know they are there if they’ve not had an actual leak. And they may have had a blocked sink a few weeks ago and think they’ve unblocked it themselves with some drain unblocker from the shop. The problem with this is that common DIY drain unblocking methods don’t resolve the problem; they just remove the blockage from the centre of the pipe and can often leave debris around the edges of the pipe, waiting to cause a blockage again in a couple of weeks or months.
Here at Blockbusters, we are often called out by people who have bought a home and then found that they’ve inherited a drainage problem. Perhaps within a few weeks of moving in they have a slow draining sink or a washing machine that’s backing up all over the kitchen floor. For some people the drains inside the house are all fine and clear, but a big, soggy puddle has appeared in the middle of the lawn where a pipe has a leak they didn’t know about before.
Unfortunately, the older a house is, the more likely there will be an undetected drainage problem – and the likelihood is that you won’t notice these until you’ve owned the house for a few weeks or even months.
With a CCTV drain survey before you purchase a home, we can identify any potential problems. Our tiny, state of the art cameras can get into every nook and cranny of your drains, and show any potential issues. This might be tree roots beginning to break through, cracks or even holes. We can provide you with footage of the drains, highlighting any issues – and you can then pass this information onto the vendor and come to an agreement as to what can be done before you exchange contracts.
Of course, if you’ve already exchanged contracts it’s too late to go back to the vendor with any problems – but we can still help! With a 24-hour emergency call-out service it doesn’t matter when your drainage problem arises; we can be there within an hour to help. Whether you need a drain unblocked or a leak repaired, we can be there to help with a smile.
Contact the team