A lot of Cobham houses have been rebuilt or heavily extended, and the drain under them is a mix of original clay and recent plastic with joints of unknown quality between the two. A survey before you buy, build or claim shows exactly what is down there and whose it is.
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 Cobham
- 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 Cobham
A village on the River Mole with large houses, private treatment plants on the outer plots and clay runs under some very expensive lawns.
Cobham, KT11, is a Surrey village on the River Mole with a Victorian High Street, large houses along the Fairmile and the Oxshott road, and newer estates and rebuilds spreading across Stoke d’Abernon. It is the far south-western edge of our patch and, underground, it is mostly about distance. Private runs on the bigger plots travel a long way under lawns, drives and gates before they reach the road, and a handful of outer properties are not on the mains sewer at all.
That is why we ask more questions on a Cobham call than most. Where the house is, how far it sits from the road, whether there is a treatment plant or a septic tank, and whether the drain has blocked before. The answers decide which van comes. A thirty-metre run under a Fairmile drive needs the long-reach jetting kit and the camera on the first visit, not the second.
The pipework is a mix: original clay under the older houses, new plastic from the rebuilds, and joints between the two of varying quality. A survey before you buy, build or claim is the cheapest thing you will do on a Cobham house, and when a repair is needed we reline rather than dig, because the gardens here deserve it. We cover Cobham, Oxshott and Stoke d’Abernon at any hour.
We cover all of Cobham (KT11) — from Cobham High Street, Painshill Park, the River Mole and across Oxshott, Esher, Stoke d'Abernon. Being genuinely local means we already know what Cobham's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Cobham →