Rats Coming Through Toilets? Hidden Drainage Entry Points | Darron Pearce | In Focus

0:00 Bats have came into the bathroom and you've got that white flexible pipe. The multi-quick fitting, yeah. Terrible stuff, isn't it? Is it like they see the light and just chew through it? Is that what it is? Pretty much so. I've heard people that now paint them black. Just paint them and then pull it back on because it's dark then. It also gives them a biting point as well because it's technically concertina. They just sit there and bite off it anyway. And the problem is, if that's fixed in behind any units, the cosmetic bathroom where you can't see any pipe work, the rat will chew at head height.

0:34 So it won't necessarily chew down, looking down. It'll chew a bull. So your water will still flush out. Your rat infestation will carry on. You will never know. And unless you're checking them multi-quick fittings and then flexi-pipes, visually taking the shelves off, things like that, you'll never find the source of infestation. No, you're right. We've had a lot of them, we have. and yeah they chew out there and uh i'm not exaggerating and i'm not making i'm not i've shown i've shown pictures of it on my talks i've got one where i'm not exaggerating at all it was four stories high and the multi-quick had been chewed and i on i honestly thought in my in when i first looked at the job i thought my question to the customer was have you brought anything new into the house have you brought a box from a garage in or you know this and the other and it didn't have anything in and it was a no so we changed it for another multi-quick and just to monitor it and we put a live camera next to it an action camera and two days later you saw its nose coming out of the side of the multi-quick as it was tuning in again four stories high wow that's big that is so you're saying he went four stories high right up the pipe yep right up the stack pipe and then coming to the one up there so again if you think at this time that rat has gone up in excess of what 45 foot that's a lot you can only guess the apartments below had fixed pipe work yeah you know he said i mean that's purely a guess or he just found the route and he stuck to that route and you know but literally honestly i honestly thought at the beginning so she's

2:09 brought that rat in in a bag or something in a box yeah so how do you solve something like that solid pipe work get a plumber involved yes yeah yeah you in that case i think the toilet had to moved forward i think the the system had to be fastened onto buttons and the toilet had to be moved forward about an inch and then they could get actually solid solid connection in okay yeah that's interesting now 45 yeah they can't climb or anything but 45 feet yeah straight up internal stuff do you reckon sometimes the rat was climbing and then they flushed the toilet and they say the rat was going up and they flushed the toilet do you reckon the rat would go flying back down again i would imagine so yeah that would make a call for the end but it would i mean but if it's an internal cast pipe into the cast pipe is going to get furred up in time yeah you know what i mean so what what it would originally been 100 mil is going to go down to like 95 90 mil because it's further up on the inside then you when you think about it that's only that diameter that's not you know a rat will easily scale that yeah i just find it amazing how we put the multi-quip back on thinking is this actually going to happen again and we put within two days it was back

3:19 it does it keeps happening there's been companies that have local to me and i put a post online i speak to them now and they said it happens all the time and uh i haven't asked what they've done to to stop it i'm guessing they did that i don't know yeah with that one i'm sure the plumber i remember the brief conversation with the plumber i think you had to move it out by about an inch and put just screw the system on some buttons onto the wall and you have to move all the pipe work and everything like that so but um at the end of the day it was either that or they'd keep on having rats yeah yeah so the biggest one that that when i when i did a course or on trains was was this the house extensions that blew my mind that did the extensions you know the way the rats get in and the way that customers think they own it, they don't.

4:11 This is another thing where, again, I've got to be careful because I don't seem to be calling anything, but in my opinion, you shouldn't have builders do drains. You know what I mean? I actually agree with that You shouldn have a I wouldn ask a drain company to go and build me an extension And I definitely you know what I mean So I wouldn ask and especially now with your building regulations 2010 part H and everything like this everything's got to be done spot on. Everything has to be done right.

4:39 And me myself, yes, you are going to get builders putting in drains on building sites and groundworks and everything like this. But if you're having an extension done, you've got to be careful about that build. And again, I'm sounding like I'm bashing the builder. You've got to be careful how that builder caps off that drain, whether he caps it off correctly, whether he moves the drain properly, whether he thinks in his ignorance, oh, nothing's going to come up there. I've put a roof tile on it and concreted it.

5:05 At the end of the day, if you're creating a dry line for that rat, that rat may sit up there for years before it breaches. But at the end of the day, if it's a dry line, that gives the rat a place to nest. It gives a place for the dry line straight into the sewer to feed, and get water and then it will come back to the dry line obviously because it's a rat latin road end to nor it's going to sit there and it's going to chew its way out and that that could take six months it could take six years and that's why people say to me oh no it can't be anything to do with the extensions 15 years ago that was built relevant it's like saying you drive your car every day to sainsbury's it never breaks down one day it will exactly it's uh it's not gonna happen straight away is it for a lot of cases it's gonna build over time but yeah i i do think that drainage and i think i don't know how the rules work but i think you should have you know drainage contractors then a proper you know just survey before and after just to make sure everything's done right surveys then you're supposed to have a pre-survey and a post-survey and that's it yeah and if it's going over um public asset then you've got to have a contractor who's approved by you know your local water board whether they do it or whether they get an approved contract you get an an approved contractor in i mean like i like i constantly say and people who know me will hear

6:20 me say we should respect each other's industries drainage for for a pest controller to go out and buy a drain camera with no drainage experience with no surveying certification you know that's like asking me to go and put a bird net up you know you're taking it out it's going to be a bad job you know what i mean and that's why you shouldn't have the drainage guy running around with the camera putting bradifacoon contract blocks on a wire if he's got no you've got no safe use of relentside certification so i've heard about that i've heard about that all the time it's criminal i don't even do that in drains i don't even do that i don't it's criminal and but again we should really be respecting each other's industries because if you think your pest control legislation is that your drainage legislation is this see see i i was talking and everyone says it but i got told that the drainage industry is very unregulated it's not as regulated as you think it is no to go out to go out and jet to drain you don't need i mean years ago when i first started it was a company called your certification and it was voluntary it wasn't mandatory it was optional it depended on what you work for but you used out you i'm sure it was called bfg british flow plan

7:36 group and they did a they did a very very basic jetting course and it was before the times we had feeder hoses and before the times we had any kind of any form of this what you see now all the legislation changed massively back in 2011 when the sewer transfer regulations when the water boards had to take back responsibility for a lot of their drainage they had to bring in the health and safety work act they had really had to really really enforce it so you couldn't stand next to without a hard hat on, without it being sign-cone and buried.

8:06 Back in my day, on emergency call-out, they'd send one man out in a van to the Leeds in the pitch black to jet a drain down an alleyway. Wow. Okay. Where was your health and safety work out then? What legislation was you working to then? You'd go and dangle your hose in, pop it in, run back to the van and start the jitter up. That's how bad the industry was back then. But now you have got the likes of the NADC. You have got the likes of DrainSafe and things like this, which again they are these these are parts of the industry which have to be respected you've got the jet courses if you're going to be using a jetter high pressure water jetter which you know on a pin nozzle forward and reverse nozzle if you if you were back in the day going to get your hand too close with it i not going to be gruesome and say it going to you know cut your hand off or anything because it not but it going to it going to hurt you and it going to take into your flesh if you get it wrong you got other things like in the drainage industry like rothenberg and you know you've got um i mean i don't know if they use them anymore because i've not used one for years but you used to have like flails go down where you and you used to smash off you know hard hard material for the side of your pipe and everything like this you got that wrong you was in big trouble so thankfully you have got industry you have got bodies now which are trying to get the industry regulated you know yeah so a lot of these groups or the na na dc are trying to push for quite a standard join them that you're part of that but that's not a full standard is it

9:36 it's not like you have to do this is it are they pushing for it to be a standard that no but what they do it all depends what let's just take the nadc for for um an example i'm a certified domestic surveyor with them that is it i've got no jetting qualification with them i've got no confined spaces qualification with them i've got nothing else within i've got no cip lining and qualifications with them because i don't need it you know what i mean again because again the pest control industry legislation is this drainage is this if i want to go and learn if i i can jet a drain or i can jet a drain by my old standards tomorrow i can go out and buy a jetting machine from a place in runcorn sticks in the back of my van and go jet drains out there's nothing at all to say i can't do that what it is saying is i'm not doing it properly by today's legislation if i don't go on the courses go and get my don't give a certification exactly the same as in the pest control industry you can drive around and sit with someone in a van if you've got the safe use of redenticides but you're not supposed to go out and put it out there until you've got your level two ah i'll tell you something now no you're wrong there you can actually go out there and do it

10:42 all with you safe use of denticide whether you're doing it yeah yeah but whether you do but that doesn't make you competent that just oh no no i fully agree with you but the way the way but and that's what i mean that's what i'm saying about the jetting side of it i can go and buy a jetter anyone can go and buy a jetter in the back of the van but that doesn't make you competent to use it correctly you've got to have the certification the training to do it you're dealing with high water you know what i mean so under extreme cases could kill you if you get it wrong you can it can seriously maim you if you get it wrong you know what i mean and but you've also got just little things like when you go to you go to somebody's my house they've got the drain you go look down the drain you don't know what that customer's put down that drain before you've got there you go there you've got a bad smell so you don't know if they've got untipped half a bucket of caustic soda down there you go and if that drain opens get a splash in your eyes then you've got problems on your hands haven't you or you've got more problems in your eyes so you've just got to all these little bits on the outside it's not just about lifting a manhole up and pointing at

11:42 some ratchet on the benching there's a lot more oh there is there is i mean i i've seen a new in new relatively new houses now i'm no drainage expert but the drains i've seen yeah they uh whoever did them they didn't know what they were doing they didn't uh when i lifted them i had to actually we had to bring the guy that owns the area and tell him they're blocked he goes what do you mean they're blocked i says we've opened up the manhole and there's eight foot of water oh so but we said to him they'll block again and he went why when the lady ran a toilet paper the toilet the water was disappearing faster than the toilet paper was yeah but I mean in all fairness without being graphic without being graphic when you go to the toilet in the morning and you drop the kids off at the pool it doesn't enter the sewer by the time you under one flush oh no it builds up over time depending on the length of the drains the fall of the drain and everything like that oh it was it was literally coming off a road and this was up a hill so yeah i'm no expert but it didn't look right at all it didn't but you know i'm not the expert you've got if you've got newer sites and things like this they're using plastic

13:08 pipe a lot of the time yeah it was all plastic it was all plastic and i mean if you're using osmo drainage and things like that it it fantastic stuff it it pretty much impossible to put it in wrong unless you just don know what you doing you know what i mean so it um but getting your levels and everything is a it something i i did many many years ago not qualified to talk about it now certified to talk about it now but this back then you literally put one bit of pipe in slip collar in the middle another bit of pipe in put it on some pea gravel covered it over job done but yeah things have changed didn't they they have obviously um so what what what what advice if you to say somebody wanted to try and do drains what would what advice would you give them about you know because obviously it's all based on experience of using your camera as well every time you use it you get better and better take your your scenario there what you said when you did about when you went on the other course uh your course and you're on about extensions and things like that yes yeah that was a mind blowing to me that was go the one of the pieces of advice i can say is look at your the other houses either side of you yeah and look how their drainage is you know what i mean and then try and

14:24 work out how where your drainage would have been so one of the favorite ones one of the favorite ones if they move the extension if they have an extension people tend to move the kitchens around more than anything else yeah has the kitchen gully been moved if it has been moved has it been capped off correctly okay okay so how does that kitchen gully go into the how does that kitchen gully go into the system do a full flow test do a dye test if need be um again flush your toilets has your toilet been moved mrs smith whereabouts was your talk wait before you had your extension bill mrs smith whereabouts was your kitchen when he was washing your pots which window did you stand and look out of or looked out of this one okay but your drainage is over there now so what happened there can you see if they've got any photos from the builders when the builders change the drainage round that will give you a good idea and things like that if you can't get into the manhole of the inspection chamber and with under the extension is there a chamber upstream or downstream you can work from it may be a public asset chamber but there's nothing to say you can't whip your camera up there and have a quick look um you know what i mean just even just

15:26 to get your and rough idea where where it is um a lot of the time you're surveying drains and you know you're in a public asset until you're in your two your cameras in there anyway so it's part of the investigation you know you've got to look at where can you get your camera in

15:46 yeah that's fair i mean the one thing i've always like when you when you tell customers about sometimes i was there was a customer was very reluctant she bought this house and we said to her you're gonna have to she had an extension she was obviously all built you know she bought it that way lovely tiles and i said and she says that's the uh drain cover it's a tile oh that's not coming up i can't do anything that's not coming up okay um and she says in the end she had to get it broke off get a proper manhole cover because she was having issues she was um but a lot of customers don't realize that they have to have that uh bit of paperwork to say a build over the build over they don't know about it they're like i didn't know about that again you see if it's built if it's called an inspection chamber for a reason you know it's a chamber you need to be able to inspect and again if you don't you know if cosmetically yes the customer might want some tiles in it or you know but look over it yeah yeah um the chamber's got to be airtight um you know if it's inside it has to be an airtight chamber so you're not getting any sewer gases or anything coming up into the property and yes there are some insect chambers

17:05 which are designed where people do fill them with concrete and put some tiles on them but you've got to be able to get into that chamber that's the fact of the matter and that's not your problem as a pest controller if the customer or the previous tenant the omoner or whatever has gone and done that if that customer wants that problem sorting you've got to get into that chamber exactly it's it's true and in the end she had she done it uh she had it all done but uh yeah If you was to go and do that now, if you was to go to that customer's house now, let's just take this scenario now, and there was an inset chamber inside of a kitchen extension, would you lift that chamber up?

17:46 I know you're asking me that now.