Plumbing

Dispute Over Scope of Drainage Works

Thomas Downey 11/04/2025 - 12.38 PM

Dear Plumbing Community. I am in dispute with a self-advertised “specialist” drainage engineer (I will refer to him as DE1) over the thoroughness and effectiveness of his attempts to trace and remove the latest of a series of recurring blockages in the toilet drainage system of an Airbnb property. Relevant info: 1) DE1’s “brief” is summarised above 2) This brief ALSO specifically included a full CCTV survey – at my sole cost - because the blockages were recurring and “one-off” clearances by plunger and/or flexible probe had patently proved unsuccessful in tackling the underlying problem. 3) There is a single manhole clearly visible within the front garden area of the property. 4) After DE1 reported fulfilment of his brief, I was given a single screenshot of the horizontal toilet soil pipe from the £120 CCTV survey. 5) Unfortunately, within 3 days of the above visit the kitchen drainage also blocked. 6) This seemed at the time to be a rather unfortunate and puzzling co-incidence. 7) I had not – up to that point – been impressed by DE1’s attitude or manner – he was already attempting to charge me VAT on a price which my home emergency insurance company had assured me to be inclusive. I confirmed that the company’s own call recordings and contemporaneous notes corroborated affirmed this. I therefore declined DE1’s invitation to reattend (at further cost to me) and paused my payment to him for work already claimed done. 8) I commissioned instead a non-specialist plumber that I had successfully worked with previously, to investigate the situation further. 9) My replacement plumber DE2 found that the manhole in the front garden area collected both kitchen and toilet waste and had itself become choked. This unattended blockage was therefore causing the toilet soil stack to progressively fill up with successive toilet flushings to the point where the toilet’s horizontal soil pipe itself became inundated and the toilet flush thereby rendered ineffective. 10) DE2 has submitted his own invoice for a most reasonable amount. Would you recommend: 1) I pay DE1’s invoice in full 2) I pay DE1’s invoice minus DE2’s invoice? 3) I pay DE1’s invoice minus DE2’s invoice minus a fair sum for my own time and trouble 4) I withhold all payment for DE1’s invoice