Kew is where we most often get asked for a survey before a purchase. The prices on Kew Road and around the Gardens mean a collapsed run under a side return is a five-figure conversation, and a camera survey settles it for a fraction of that before exchange.
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 Kew
- 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 Kew
Riverside Victorian and Edwardian terraces on clay runs, with the water table rising to meet them every winter.
Kew is Richmond’s quieter neighbour and, under the pavement, its older sibling. The terraces between Kew Green, Sandycombe Road and North Sheen went up in the decades either side of 1900 on salt-glazed clay drains, and those drains still do the job, mostly. What has changed is the ground. The Thames sits at the end of almost every street here, and each winter the water table rises into the backfill around the pipes, lifting silt into any joint that has moved. That is why a Kew gully that behaves all summer backs up in the first wet week of November.
The trees do their part too. Kew’s plane trees and the mature gardens off Lichfield Road push roots towards the one warm, wet thing underground, and a hairline gap in a clay collar is all the invitation they need. We clear root blockages across TW9 every month, and the ones that stay cleared are the ones where the camera found the entry point and the pipe was lined.
There is a practical Kew point as well: a lot of the housing stock here is shared. Semi-detached pairs and terraces often drain into one run before it reaches the sewer, so a blockage in one garden floods the neighbour first. We are used to explaining who pays and why, and to doing the survey that proves it. We are local, we answer at any hour, and a Kew drain is one of our favourite problems.
We cover all of Kew (TW9) — from Kew Gardens, Kew Green, Kew Bridge and across Richmond, North Sheen, Mortlake. Being genuinely local means we already know what Kew's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Kew →