Landlords in Heston call us for the paper trail as much as the pipe. A survey before a tenancy, or before a deposit dispute, records the state of a drain in writing and on video, and settles whose habits blocked it.
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 Heston
- 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 Heston
Interwar semis, a lot of HMOs and converted houses, and drains that now serve twice the households they were laid for.
Heston is the northern half of Hounslow, TW5, between the A4 and the M4, a suburb of interwar semis and terraces that has quietly become one of the most densely occupied parts of the borough. Houses built for one family now hold two or three households, and the drains underneath them were never consulted.
That is the Heston pattern. A clay run laid for one kitchen now takes three, the grease load has tripled, the wipes have arrived, and a pipe that behaved for seventy years blocks twice a winter. Clearing it is easy. The useful part of the visit is telling the landlord what the run can actually cope with, and which of the added bathrooms is on a long, shallow waste that will keep blocking until it is re-laid.
We do a lot of landlord work here as a result: surveys before a tenancy starts, surveys when a deposit dispute needs a referee, and clearances with a written account of what came out. Tenants can call us directly too. We cover Heston, Cranford and Lampton around the clock from our Hounslow side.
We cover all of Heston (TW5) — from Heston Road, Heston Park, the M4 at Heston and across Hounslow, Cranford, Osterley. Being genuinely local means we already know what Heston's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Heston →