Drainage in Bradford

What the drains are like in Bradford

Pipework and build eras

Bradford is not one place underground any more than it is above ground. The inner ring is dense Victorian stone terrace and back to back, most of it built between 1820 and 1860 and then again after 1865 once the bylaws changed. Around that sits interwar and postwar semi detached housing, the large estates at Holme Wood and Buttershaw, and modern estates on the fringe. Across the district it runs roughly a third terraced and over a third semi detached. Age decides what is under the ground, and here it spans two centuries.

How long we are

The longest run we do. A58 out of Wetherby towards Leeds, onto the A6120 outer ring road, then the A647 in through Pudsey. Dawsons Corner and the Stanningley Bypass are where it slows down.

Access and parking

The bylaw terraces built after 1865 have rear passages six feet six inches wide. That is the constraint, because no van is getting down one, so rear access is on foot with the reels. The older back to backs have no rear access at all. Add the gradients across the valleys and it is rarely a park outside job.

Areas that differ

Sixty conservation areas across the district, four of them in the city centre and five in Manningham alone. Little Germany is 1850s to 1890s warehousing and Saltaire is an 1850s model village where every property is listed. Holme Wood and Buttershaw are postwar estate stock, which is a different job again.