Hammersmith's riverside houses on the Lower and Upper Mall sit on some of the oldest private drainage in west London, with a high water table moving the joints. A survey before you buy, extend or claim shows what you actually own, and where it becomes Thames Water's lateral drain.
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 Hammersmith
- 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 Hammersmith
Brackenbury's Victorian terraces, Georgian riverside houses on the Mall, mansion blocks and new towers: four drainage systems in one postcode.
Hammersmith, W6, packs four kinds of drainage into one postcode. Brackenbury Village and the streets around Ravenscourt Park are Victorian terraces on shared clay runs, converted and extended for a century. The Lower and Upper Mall have Georgian and Victorian houses on the river with some of the oldest private drainage in west London. The main roads carry mansion blocks with shared stacks, and the Broadway is ringed with new towers whose communal runs are still finding out what the builders left in them.
Terrace calls are the familiar converted-house story: four kitchens on a pipe laid for one, grease from the top flat, a flooded kitchen in the garden flat. Riverside calls add a high water table that lifts silt into every moved joint each winter, and the question of where a very old private drain becomes Thames Water’s lateral. The camera answers both.
King Street and the Broadway are a grease story. Restaurants and flats above shops on small old pipes produce fatbergs we find professionally fascinating and tenants find expensive, and a planned jetting schedule on a commercial run beats the Saturday-night flood every time. We cover Hammersmith and Brackenbury at any hour from the Chiswick and Barnes side of our patch.
We cover all of Hammersmith (W6) — from Hammersmith Broadway, King Street, Hammersmith Bridge and across Chiswick, Fulham, Shepherd's Bush. Being genuinely local means we already know what Hammersmith's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Hammersmith →