West Hill and the Heath side have large period houses on long clay runs under mature gardens, and a survey before an extension or after a second blockage finds the joint the roots have found. In the mansion blocks it maps the shared system so the managing agent knows what they own.
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 Putney
- 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 Putney
Riverside terraces, mansion blocks on the main roads and big houses up West Hill: a water table at the bottom and long runs at the top.
Putney, SW15, climbs from the river: Victorian terraces along the Lower Richmond Road and the Embankment, Edwardian avenues up West Hill, mansion blocks along the Upper Richmond Road and big houses towards the Heath. The bottom of the hill is a water table story and the top is a long-run story, and the mansion blocks in between are a shared-stack story all of their own.
By the river, old clay joints take on silt each winter as the ground saturates, and the Embankment gullies back up whenever the Thames is high and the surface water system has nowhere to send the rain. We clear the private run and say plainly when the river is the limit rather than the pipe, because clearing a clean drain and invoicing for it is not how we want to be remembered.
The mansion blocks are the local speciality. Many flats, one stack, and a blocked toilet on the second floor that is really a stack problem four floors tall. We check before anyone plunges. Up the hill, the big houses have long runs under mature gardens and the Heath’s trees have found the joints, and the camera finds which joint. We cover Putney and the Heath around the clock from the Barnes and Roehampton side.
We cover all of Putney (SW15) — from Putney High Street, Putney Bridge, the Embankment and across Roehampton, Barnes, Wandsworth. Being genuinely local means we already know what Putney's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Putney →