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 Hampton
- 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 Hampton
Victorian cottages and waterworks-era streets with some of the oldest pipes on our patch.
Hampton has water history like nowhere else on our patch. The great Victorian waterworks along the riverfront supplied London its drinking water, and the streets of cottages built around them in the 1850s to 1890s got, naturally, Victorian drains. Parts of Hampton village and Hampton Hill are running waste through some of the oldest clay pipework we ever put a camera into, and honestly, the footage is beautiful. Hand-laid brick inspection chambers turn up under Hampton gardens like little cathedrals. (We photograph them. For the archive. It’s normal.)
Age brings character, and character brings blockages: lime-mortar joints that roots walk straight through, gentle sags where 150 years of ground settlement has let a pipe dip and collect grease, and the odd surprise where a long-gone builder connected something creatively. Between the cottages, the between-wars semis towards Hampton Hill add the usual extension-overload problem, kitchens working drains that were sized for a scullery.
The Bushy Park side contributes magnificent trees and their equally magnificent root systems. All of TW12, village to Hampton Wick borders, is covered 24/7. Old pipes deserve engineers who actually like them, and that is, without competition, us.
We cover all of Hampton (TW12) — from Hampton Court (up the road), Bushy Park, Hampton village and across Hampton Hill, Hampton Wick, Teddington. Being genuinely local means we already know what Hampton's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Hampton →