Burst Main or Blocked Drain Andover | Tell the Difference

Water where it shouldn't be is never a good sight. But what you're looking at outside your property on Bridge Street, or coming up through your kitchen drain on East Street, could be two completely different problems with two completely different solutions. And calling the wrong people wastes time you haven't got.

Here's how to read the signs properly.

What a burst water main actually looks like

I had a call last spring from a business owner near Andover town centre who was convinced his drain had blocked. Water was pooling across the pavement, spreading fast. He'd already poured a bottle of drain cleaner down his gully.

It was a burst supply pipe. Nothing to do with his drains at all.

Burst mains have a distinct set of tells:

• Water appears suddenly, often after a cold snap or heavy traffic vibration
• It keeps coming. It doesn't slow down because there's no blockage to clear
• The water is clean and clear, not grey or foul-smelling
• You'll often see it bubbling up through tarmac or pushing up from a kerb joint
• Your internal water pressure drops or disappears entirely
• Neighbours may lose water too, especially in older SP10 streets with Victorian-era mains

If that's what you're seeing, stop reading this and call Southern Water on 0800 820 999. It's their pipe, their responsibility, and their bill. Don't call a drainage company.

What a blocked drain actually looks like

A blocked drain behaves differently. The water has somewhere to come from: your property.

• Toilets gurgle or fill higher than usual when you flush
• Sinks and baths drain slowly or back up completely
• Foul smell, because the water sitting in the system is waste water, not clean supply
• Pooling outside is localised to your inspection chamber or gully, not spreading across the road
• Your neighbours still have full water pressure. This one is yours.

Sometimes both things happen at once in older parts of town. I've been to jobs near the Chantry Centre where a collapsed lateral drain was directing surface water back through a property while a separate supply leak was softening the same stretch of ground. That's a messy morning's work.

The smell test is the fastest shortcut

Honestly. If it stinks, it's drainage. Clean water escaping from a supply main smells of nothing, or faintly of chlorine. Waste water smells like waste water. Trust your nose before you do anything else.

Who owns what

Supply pipes (the ones bringing fresh water in) are Southern Water's responsibility up to your property boundary, then yours from the boundary to your stop tap. Blocked or damaged drains that serve only your property are yours. Shared drains serving multiple properties may be Southern Water's or your local authority's, depending on when they were adopted.

If you're not sure which side of that line the problem sits on, a CCTV drain survey will tell you in under an hour.

Drainsco covers Andover town centre and the wider SP10 and SP11 postcodes, with engineers available around the clock. No call-out fee, and you'll have a clear price before anyone starts work. If it turns out to be a burst main and not a drain, we'll tell you that straight away and point you in the right direction.