You’d be surprised just how many things workers find in drains… that really really shouldn’t be there.
- A mini
Well, half a mini to be exact. Whether it was someone attempting their own version of the Italian Job, or a Top Gear stunt that nobody likes to talk about, somehow half a mini ended up in the London sewer system in 2014 – just one of 52,000 blockages found that year alone.
- A hand grenade
‘Unblocking drains is a dangerous job but someone’s got to do it’, is something almost no one said until a hand grenade was pulled out of the London sewers in 2017. Who knows how it got there, but it just goes to show, when it comes to cleaning out drains, you need to be ready for anything.
- A Rolex… worth £21k
Imagine it, your day job largely deals with quite possibly the worst of the worst waste – from fatty foods to well, you can guess. And there you are trying to muddle through another blockage, when you find a watch. But not just any watch, a Rolex. That’s what happened to one lucky street cleaner in Essex in 2012.
- And a lot of it.
The sewer is probably the last place you’d think to look for gold. Good thing it was found by accident then. In 2009 a sewage treatment facility in Japan recorded a higher gold yield than some of the world’s best mines. Why? It’s likely the gold came from a precision equipment factory near the treatment facility.
- The Fatberg
Most will have heard this story by now, but for those that haven’t, in 2018, a fatberg was found in the London sewer systems that weighed a staggering 130 tonnes (that’s the equivalent of two Airbus A318 aeroplanes – which are NOT small planes).
Whether it’s unexpected or routine, if you’ve experienced drainage problems, Happy Drains is here to help – and of course, if we do end up finding a Rolex or two, we’ll let you know.
