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 Brentford
- 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 Brentford
New-build flat country: communal stacks, macerators and wet wipes at apartment-block scale.
Brentford is the newest drainage on our patch and, against every stereotype in this trade, new does not mean trouble-free. The waterside towers and the stadium-quarter developments have filled TW8 with thousands of modern flats, and modern flats mean communal soil stacks: one vertical pipe serving ten kitchens and ten bathrooms. One resident’s “flushable” wipes plus one ground-floor bend equals a blockage with a distribution list. A CCTV drain survey can separate a one-off obstruction from a damaged joint or badly laid run. The camera doesn’t lie. It’s one of the many things we love about it.
Basement car parks and undercrofts add pumped drainage and macerators to the mix, kit that older TW postcodes simply doesn’t have, and which fails at apartment-block scale when it fails. Planned inspection and drain jetting give block managers a chance to deal with grease, scale and debris before the emergency version of the same visit.
Old Brentford is still here too: the terraces off the High Street and around Boston Manor run on Victorian clay, and the canal and Brent keep the ground interesting where old pipes meet new developments. Flat, house or whole block, TW8 is covered 24/7, one number, prices agreed before we start.
For the two ends of TW8, see what can go wrong with new-build drains during construction and what actually forms inside grease-heavy shared pipework.
We cover all of Brentford (TW8) — from Brentford waterside, the Grand Union Canal, Gtech Community Stadium and across Isleworth, Kew (over the bridge), Chiswick. Being genuinely local means we already know what Brentford's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Brentford →