Local plumbing and drainage engineers across Bicester and surrounding areas. Send a request online and we pass it to a local engineer.
We help homes and businesses across Bicester with blocked drains, leaks and boiler work. Send a request online and we pass it to a local engineer. Because every job is different, the engineer talks through the work with you before it starts.
We cover the common plumbing and drainage needs in Bicester. In addition, local engineers can handle specialist work such as CCTV surveys and boiler servicing.
Our engineers cover Bicester and the wider Oxfordshire area. They attend homes and businesses across the town, while nearby streets and villages are covered too.
Bicester is one of the fastest-growing towns in the country. The old core around Market Square, St Edburg's Church and The Causeway has homes from medieval times. Around it, large estates at Kingsmere, Elmsbrook and Graven Hill have added thousands of new homes.
Older homes in the centre often still have clay drains from the late Victorian era. The Causeway and Priory Road have period cottages where pipes were patched up bit by bit. As a result, one house can hold clay, cast iron, copper and plastic, which makes faults hard to trace without a survey.
The town sits on Oxford Clay, which drains slowly and moves with the seasons. This puts stress on buried pipes and can open their joints. New estates use sustainable drainage to hold back rain water, although it does not always join the older sewers smoothly.
The mix of new and old means plumbers need to know both. For example, a Kingsmere new-build may have a scaled-up boiler, while a Priory Road cottage may have blocked clay drains. Either way, a local engineer will know what to look for.
A typical job on Priory Road is a 1920s semi with slow kitchen and toilet drains. A drain camera often finds scale inside an old cast iron waste pipe, and a clay joint that has moved with the soil. The fix is to descale the pipe and replace the broken section with plastic pipe on a gravel bed.
In short, clay soil makes moved joints common in Bicester. Early checks can find them before they turn into an emergency.
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New estates join a drain network that is still growing around them. The clay soil drains slowly and moves with the seasons, which can affect new pipes. Additionally, the hard local water starts to scale up new plumbing from the first year.
Homes around Market Square, The Causeway and Priory Road often have drains built up over a century. They may mix clay, cast iron and plastic pipes, and the plans are often missing. Tree roots can also break into old clay pipes, so a CCTV survey is wise before you buy or renovate.
Oxford Clay shrinks in dry summers and swells in wet winters. This can open pipe joints in summer and crush weak pipes in winter. Over time the damage adds up, so regular checks help you spot faults before they cause a blockage.