Most building services already sit on a planned maintenance schedule. Lifts are serviced, fire alarms are tested, air handling gets its filter changes, and every visit leaves a dated record in the maintenance file. Drainage is often the exception, not because it matters less but because nothing about it suggests an interval: there is no service sticker on a soil stack, and below-ground pipework gives little warning before it stops. A commercial drainage contract from TrueFlow treats the drains as one more maintained asset, with a schedule, a fixed scope and a paper trail, backed by reactive cover 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
How a drainage maintenance contract is built
Every contract starts with a free site survey. An engineer walks the building and grounds and builds a picture of what the drainage actually consists of: the foul and surface-water runs, the external gullies and channels, the internal stacks, and interceptors where the site has them. Many office buildings have never had this done, and the survey alone can resolve questions a facilities team has carried for years, such as where a run discharges or which chamber serves which wing.
From that picture comes a visit schedule. Frequency is assessed per site rather than taken from a table, because a two-storey office with light washroom use and a six-storey multi-tenant building do not need the same attention, and no standard interval exists that we would quote blind. We would rather recommend fewer visits than sell unnecessary ones; the survey is what makes that recommendation defensible when it is challenged at budget time.
Each visit then carries a fixed scope built on our standard rates: drain jetting from £150 and CCTV checks from £120, both including VAT, with the full list on our pricing page. Afterwards the site receives a written condition report for the maintenance file, recording what was cleaned, what any camera pass showed and anything worth watching before the next visit. Because the scope repeats, the reports can be read against each other, and a line that is deteriorating shows up as a trend rather than a surprise.
Between visits, the contract is backed by full reactive cover: emergency call-outs from £120, available 24/7, 365 days a year, with the exact price agreed before work starts. All work is carried out fully insured and guaranteed for 6 months.
Washrooms that serve a whole building
Office washrooms concentrate use in a way domestic plumbing never sees. A urinal run serving a busy floor takes hundreds of flushes a day, and the mineral deposits left behind by urine and hard water accumulate on the inside of the waste pipe until the bore has narrowed enough to drain slowly and hold odour. The stacks in a multi-storey building do similar work at larger scale, collecting every floor’s washrooms into one vertical pipe whose condition nobody considers until the lowest floor discovers it has failed. Planned visits keep those lines clear before either stage is reached, and where a site prefers it, washroom work can usually be arranged outside core hours, early, late or at weekends, subject to access being available.
If the building runs a staff kitchen, the grease it produces is a separate discipline with its own trap-servicing regime, covered on our main commercial drainage page.
Car parks and yards before winter
External drainage does its hardest work in the months when nobody wants to stand outside inspecting it. Car-park gullies and linear channels collect leaves through autumn and silt all year round, and the first sustained winter rain is usually what reveals which of them have stopped accepting water. Standing water in a car park is a slip hazard in October and an ice sheet in January, and both land on the FM team’s risk register rather than ours. A scheduled autumn clean empties gullies, channels and interceptors while they can still be cleared routinely, and because TrueFlow is an Upper Tier registered waste carrier (CBDU538687), the silt and arisings leave site with the transfer documentation your records require.
Why planned jetting beats waiting
A scheduled jetting visit costs from £150 and happens at a time the site chose, on pipework that is still flowing. A blockage picks its own moment, usually mid-occupancy, takes facilities out of use while an engineer travels, and begins at £120 for emergency attendance before the clearing work itself is priced. The planned version also compounds in value: each condition report adds to a running record of the site’s drainage, which turns next year’s budget line from an estimate into a forecast and gives any future survey a baseline to compare against.
Office drainage contract FAQs
What does a planned maintenance visit include?
A fixed scope agreed in the contract: typically jetting of the runs identified at the site survey, cleaning of external gullies and channels, a camera check on any line with a history, and a written condition report issued afterwards for the maintenance file. The scope stays constant from visit to visit unless the site changes, so each report can be compared directly with the last.
How is a drainage maintenance contract priced?
Quoted per site after a free survey. A contract carries no ready-made price; the quote is built from the agreed visit scope at our published rates, jetting from £150 and CCTV surveys from £120, all including VAT, and confirmed in writing before anything is committed.
Can one contract cover several sites?
Yes. We cover Berkshire along with nearby Surrey and Hampshire towns including Camberley, Egham, Staines, Farnborough, Fleet, Aldershot, Farnham, Yateley and Chobham, so an FM portfolio spread across the area can sit under a single agreement with a per-site schedule and a separate report trail for each building’s file.
What happens if something fails between visits?
The emergency line answers 24/7, 365 days a year, with a 60-minute response target and call-outs from £120 including VAT. The exact price is agreed before work begins, and because a contract site has already been surveyed, the engineer arrives knowing the layout rather than learning it during the flood.
Start with the free site survey
A drainage contract begins with an engineer walking your site, at no cost and with no commitment on either side. Call TrueFlow on 0808 175 7440 to book the survey, or request a callback and we will ring back at a time that suits the building’s day.