The Georgian and Victorian houses around Barnes Pond and along the terrace sit on some of the oldest private drainage we work on, and the ground movement in this low riverside clay has had two centuries to shift the joints. A survey before you buy, extend or claim is the only way to know what you actually own.
A CCTV drain survey is exactly what it sounds like: we put a camera down your drains and watch, in glorious detail, what four decades of plumbing decisions look like from the inside. To be clear, we would do this bit for free. It’s the best television in the trade. Narrating a drain run like a nature documentary (“here we see the fatberg in its natural habitat”) is a professional perk.
What you get is the useful part: a plain-English report of exactly what’s down there, where it is, and what (if anything) actually needs doing. No jargon without translation, no invented “urgent works”. If the drain is healthy, the report says so.
When a survey earns its money:
- Repeat blockages. If the same drain keeps blocking, something structural is causing it: roots, a dropped joint, scale, or a slumped section. The camera finds the cause, so you stop paying to treat the symptom.
- Buying a house in the TW area. Much of the local stock has original clay drains from the Victorian era or the 1930s. A £250 survey before exchange can save you a £3,000+ excavation after. Lenders and insurers increasingly ask for one.
- Landlords and letting agents. A dated survey report is clean evidence of drain condition between tenancies.
What it costs: a standard domestic survey runs £150–£350 depending on how much drain there is to inspect, and homebuyer surveys with a full written report start around £250. Fixed price, agreed before we start. If the survey finds something that needs fixing, the survey fee is credited against repair work we do, so you never pay twice to learn the same fact.
What to do right now in Barnes
- A survey is a planned visit, not an emergency. If water is actually backing up right now, call us about the blockage first.
- Have a rough idea where your manholes or inspection covers are. If you don't know, that's fine, finding them is part of the job.
- Buying a house? Book the survey before exchange, not after. A collapsed drain is the buyer's problem the moment you own it.
CCTV Drain Survey help, local to Barnes
A low riverside village where the Thames, the common and the water table all have opinions about your drains.
Barnes has the feel of a village and the drainage of one too. It sits on a low, flat bend of the Thames with the common on one side and the river on the other, and the water table here is never far below the lawn. The Georgian terraces around Barnes Pond and the Victorian streets off Church Road drain through clay pipework that has had two hundred years of riverside ground movement to settle into, and settle it has.
What we see most in SW13 is water that has nowhere to go. After a wet week the ground is saturated, the surface water system is working flat out and a private drain that was already half silted simply stops. Then the back gully lifts, the downstairs loo gurgles and somebody rings us at seven in the morning. Clearing it is the easy part. Finding the dropped joint or the root mat that let the silt build up is what stops next month’s call.
The other Barnes reality is shared runs under boundary walls. A lot of the older terraces drain through the neighbour’s garden before they reach the sewer under the street, and blockages here very often turn into a conversation about whose pipe it is. We know the lateral drain rules, we do the camera work that settles the question, and we are happy to explain it to both households. We cover Barnes, Castelnau and the common, day and night.
We cover all of Barnes (SW13) — from Barnes Pond, Barnes Common, Castelnau and across Mortlake, East Sheen, Putney. Being genuinely local means we already know what Barnes's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Barnes →