A fairly short run of gutter on my house started to overflow in heavy rain recently. It's along a part of the house that I don't often walk along even in the dry, and as I avoid doing so when it's wet it obviously could have been blocked for a while. It's allegedly run in to a soakaway (so the builder's plans from 1968 say), so tree roots would be very likely. A previous house had exactly that problem and needed a re-run of pipes underground to the soakaway. I have a mini-Dynorod attachment for my pressure washer and as this part of my house is only single storey, I thought I'd have a bash at blasting it through before excavating. No luck - even with all of the pipe of the jet nozzle shoved down through the swan-neck into the downpipe and beyond, no clearing effect resulted. There was a rancid stench not dissimilar to sewage however, so I wondered whether it really was run to a soakaway. But because the nearest sewer pipe is twenty metres away that seemed unlikely when digging a soakaway would be easier.
Cut to the denouement. I removed the swan-neck and found water brimming from the top and what looked like a couple of roots poking out. But..... but roots don't have toes, do they? The pipe was blocked by the stinking corpse of a large rodent stuck head-down in the top of the downpipe and totally blocking it! Once removed and the swan-neck reinstated and after today's heavy rain, no further overflow happened. Did I smell a rat? Maybe I did but here in the Chilterns there is a local speciality rodent called a glis-glis (or edible dormouse, or fat dormouse) and they are everywhere. The body of a glis-glis is similarly sized to a rat or small squirrel (also plentiful) and as it was putrid its identity was indecipherable. Typical glis-glis below...
Cut to the denouement. I removed the swan-neck and found water brimming from the top and what looked like a couple of roots poking out. But..... but roots don't have toes, do they? The pipe was blocked by the stinking corpse of a large rodent stuck head-down in the top of the downpipe and totally blocking it! Once removed and the swan-neck reinstated and after today's heavy rain, no further overflow happened. Did I smell a rat? Maybe I did but here in the Chilterns there is a local speciality rodent called a glis-glis (or edible dormouse, or fat dormouse) and they are everywhere. The body of a glis-glis is similarly sized to a rat or small squirrel (also plentiful) and as it was putrid its identity was indecipherable. Typical glis-glis below...
Last edited:
Imagine the panic being stuck head-first in a slippery drainpipe...