Half of Esher is being rebuilt and the other half was built in the 1930s, and a survey tells you which kind of drain you have before you commit to a basement or an extension. On a KT10 plot a collapsed run under a new driveway is a five-figure conversation, and the camera is a few hundred pounds.
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 Esher
- 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 Esher
Large plots, long private runs and a lot of rebuilding: the drains in Esher are either brand new or very old, and both kinds block.
Esher, KT10, is big houses on big plots between Sandown Park and the Claremont estate, with Edwardian and 1930s homes in Claygate and Hinchley Wood and a constant programme of rebuilding and extending across the whole area. From underground, the town is two kinds of drain. The old ones are 1930s clay runs that have had ninety years of clay-soil movement. The new ones are plastic, laid last year, and already blocked by builders’ debris or a joint that was never glued.
Both kinds have the same complication: length. An Esher private drain can run forty metres from the house to the road, under lawns, driveways and the occasional tennis court, with a few changes of direction along the way. A blockage halfway down is nowhere near any gully and no rod will reach it. We locate it with the camera first, clear it from the right chamber, and only then talk about what caused it.
We also do a lot of pre-build work here. Before a basement, an extension or a new drive goes in, a survey tells you what the run looks like and whether you are about to build over a problem. We reline rather than dig wherever we can, because nobody wants a trench through an Esher garden. We cover Esher, Claygate and Hinchley Wood at any hour.
We cover all of Esher (KT10) — from Esher High Street, Sandown Park, Claremont Landscape Garden and across Claygate, Hinchley Wood, Thames Ditton. Being genuinely local means we already know what Esher's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Esher →