The Drain File: What to Keep, Scan and Shred Before You Sell

Selling a house is mostly a paperwork sport. You expect the energy certificates, the boiler service record, the little booklet for the alarm that nobody has looked at since 2018. What catches people out is the drain file. Or, more often, the fact that there isn’t one.

Drainage doesn’t come up in every sale. But when it does — a shared pipe, a soggy patch on the lawn, a question on the property information form, a buyer’s surveyor poking a torch into a manhole — having the right bits of paper turns a vague shrug into a straight answer. That’s worth real money and, just as importantly, real time.

Why a buyer’s solicitor asks about drains at all

On a standard property information form, sellers are asked about drainage and sewerage arrangements. Most of the time the answer is “connected to the mains”. Fine. But if there’s anything unusual — a septic tank, a treatment plant, a shared drain running under next door’s patio, a history of blockages, a repair that involved digging up the drive — the paper trail matters.

Buyers and their lenders want to know that the drainage is legal, working and not about to become their problem. A clean set of records does that quietly. A missing set doesn’t necessarily kill a sale, but it can slow it down while someone orders a CCTV survey at short notice and everyone waits for the report.

The five pieces of paper that actually earn their keep

1. CCTV drain survey reports

If a survey was done — when you bought the house, after a blockage, before a repair — keep the report and the DVD or file link. A dated survey showing the drain was clear and structurally sound at a point in time is genuinely useful. It tells a buyer what the pipes looked like, not just what someone hoped they looked like.

2. Repair invoices and job sheets

An invoice from a drainage firm showing what was done, when, and by whom is more valuable than a vague memory of “a man came out and sorted it”. If a section of pipe was replaced, a gully rebuilt or a collapsed drain lined, the invoice is the proof. It also helps the next owner understand what they’re looking at if the same run ever plays up again.

3. Warranties and guarantees

Some drain repairs and lining jobs come with a guarantee. Keep the paperwork, note the start date, and check whether it’s transferable to a new owner. A ten-year guarantee that dies with the seller is less useful, but it still shows the work was done properly. A transferable one is a small selling point.

4. A simple maintenance log

This doesn’t need to be a leather-bound ledger. A note on your phone or a sheet in a folder is enough: date, what happened, who came out, what they found. “March 2024 — rear gully cleared, leaves and grit, no damage” is the sort of line that reassures a buyer more than a stack of old quotes.

5. Correspondence about shared pipes

If you share a drain or sewer with neighbours, keep letters, emails, deeds of easement, or anything that sets out who is responsible for what. Shared drainage is one of those topics where a single old letter can save an hour of solicitor head-scratching. If a neighbour has ever contributed to a repair, note it. If the water company has adopted the pipe, keep that confirmation too.

What you can cheerfully bin

Not every scrap of paper deserves a shoebox. Old quotes you never accepted, generic leaflets pushed through the door, and receipts for a £6 bottle of drain unblocker are not going to impress anyone. You can also lose the “we’ll be with you between 8am and 6pm” text messages once the job is done.

The test is simple: would this document answer a reasonable question from a buyer, a solicitor or an insurer? If yes, keep it. If no, shred it.

Scan it, name it, forget about it

You don’t need to keep tatty paper if you’d rather not. Scan or photograph the important documents and store them in one folder in the cloud. Name the files sensibly — “2023-06 CCTV survey rear drain” is better than “IMG_4821”. Keep the originals of anything with a guarantee or a legal agreement, but digital copies are fine for most invoices and reports.

When a solicitor asks, you want to be able to send a single email with three attachments, not spend a weekend rummaging through the loft.

If you haven’t got the paperwork

Plenty of sellers don’t. Houses change hands, folders get lost, and previous owners weren’t always organised. If you’re missing records, don’t panic and don’t invent a history. Be honest, and if there’s a live concern — a slow-draining gully, a shared pipe with no paperwork, a smell you’ve learned to live with — get a survey done before you market the property. A fresh report is a far better sales tool than a half-remembered story about a builder who definitely fixed it once.

The quiet bargaining chip

A tidy drain file won’t sell a house on its own. Kitchens and school catchments do that. But it removes a category of risk that buyers and lenders dislike, and it makes you look like the kind of owner who looks after things. In a North West market where Victorian terraces, 1930s semis and new-build estates all have their own drainage quirks, that reputation is worth having.

So before the For Sale board goes up, give the drain paperwork half an hour. Keep the reports, invoices, guarantees and shared-pipe letters. Scan what you can. Shred the rest. Your future self — and your solicitor — will thank you.