London is a city where no emergency drainage company is ever out of work. The city’s drains and sewers were designed to deal with a far less crowded city – where people used a whole lot less water. It helps to be a historian when you’re a plumber in London.

Wherever you get a large local population, you get an overworked drainage system. This is why every plumber in London is ready by the phone when the downpours start. There are the obvious problems of spacious town houses, designed for single families, being converted into apartments housing several times that many – all sharing the same antiquated drainage system.

Then there are the stresses associated with increased road traffic, mature tree roots, new building developments etc – all of which can cause fractures in elderly underground pipes. Now, to add to this, we have the problems of increased rainfall associated with global warming.

If a drain is only just coping with its load, a deluge will cause instant flooding – especially in heavily built-up areas. Although we are all “doing our bit” to reduce global warming, the average emergency drainage company won’t be out of work any time soon.

The problem of flooding has been made 10 times worse, owing to London’s commitment to building new housing developments on flood plains. With nowhere to drain away to naturally, the water backs up – into people’s homes and gardens. We at IQ Plumbing Services are an experienced emergency drainage company working exclusively in the London area.

However bad the climate gets, our customers can all take steps to reduce the risk of becoming flooded. These can be as simple as installing sink traps and using hygiene bins to dispose of so-called “flushable” sanitary goods.

London is a city of fine old houses and properties oozing with character. It is also a city of aging pipework and drains oozing with compacted kitchen waste. Unfortunately, people rarely call out a plumber in London unless the situation gets serious, which is why so many call-outs are emergencies.There’s a lot that people can do to minimise the risk of large expense, starting with a monthly or quarterly maintenance check with their plumber, rather than using him as the 5th emergency service! London companies know how important property maintenance is: if their workplace gets flooded, the insurance company may not pay up if they get a negative report from the plumber. London is full of chic restaurants in converted town houses, who overload their already taxed drains by using them as disposal chutes for cooking grease – and then wonder why their plumbing bills aren’t covered.In any week, a plumber in London may get called out to blocked drains (both residential and commercial); burst pipes (both summer and winter, owing to the aging pipework in a lot of older London properties); CCTV drainage checks (usually in connection with badly blocked drains), and unspecified flooding.The last can often be a case of “mistaken identity†: the householder may report water dripping through the downstairs ceiling as a burst pipe, when in fact it’s a cracked drain from the bath. Either way, the remedy is the same – up with the floorboards and, if it’s not caught quickly enough, down with the ceiling.At IQ Plumbing Services we get both routine and emergency call-outs; anything from leaky tap washers to collapsed, blocked drains. In all cases our response is immediate, minimising the risk of further property damage.