Search for drainage help in Sharjah and you get a mix of results: the municipality drainage department, a municipality tanker discharge facility, and a list of private companies. They do different things, and ringing the wrong one costs you an hour you probably do not have. This guide sorts them out.
The short version: anything inside your boundary wall is yours and needs a private tanker. Anything in the public street is the municipality’s.
Call the municipality when the problem is public infrastructure
- A manhole in the public road that is overflowing or has a damaged cover
- Sewage surfacing in the street rather than on your plot
- A public sewer line that appears to be blocked or surcharging across several properties
- Anything to do with a connection to the public network, or an application for one
These are municipal infrastructure, and no private tanker company can repair or adopt them. A tanker can clear water that has already arrived on your property as a result, but the cause stays with the municipality.
Call a private tanker when the problem is on your side of the wall
- A septic or holding tank that is full, overflowing or smelling — see septic tank services
- A building holding tank at an apartment block, hotel apartment or staff accommodation
- Standing water in a basement, car park, yard or construction excavation
- A blocked inspection chamber or manhole inside the property boundary
- A labour camp tank that has outrun its collection schedule
- Wash-down, process or grease-laden water at a commercial premises
All of these are tanker work: the water or waste has collected somewhere it should not be, and it needs lifting out and carrying away. That is what a 5,000-gallon vacuum tanker does, and it is the whole of what we do.
The tanker discharge facility is not a service you book
The Sharjah Drainage Tanker Discharge Facility appears in search results next to drainage companies, which makes it look like somewhere you could ring. It is not. It is the plant where licensed tankers offload what they have collected, under a discharge permit and an RFID-metered fee. It is the end of our journey, not the start of yours.
If you have found that listing while looking for someone to empty a tank, the thing you actually want is a tanker company. What happens at the discharge facility afterwards is covered in where Sharjah sewage tankers discharge.
When you genuinely cannot tell
Plenty of situations are ambiguous from where the customer is standing. Water is coming up through a floor drain; is that your tank being full or the public line surcharging? Usually the tank, but not always. The practical test is whether it started at your property alone or across the street at the same time.
If you are not sure, describe what you are seeing on the phone and we will tell you honestly which it sounds like — including when the answer is that you need the municipality rather than us. Sending a tanker that cannot help nobody wants, least of all at two in the morning. Call +971 54 246 3788, or see emergency drainage for what to do while you decide.