In Richmond the survey usually pays for itself twice: once by finding the actual fault, and once by making sure nobody digs a trench through a conservation-area garden on a guess. On period property this valuable, deciding from footage rather than opinion is simply cheaper.
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 Richmond
- 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 Richmond
High-value period property, mature street trees, and root ingress in century-old clay runs.
Richmond’s drains are as period as its houses. The Victorian terraces off Sheen Road, the grand villas on Richmond Hill and the cottages in Petersham mostly run on clay pipework that predates the First World War, and in conservation areas nobody has ever been keen to dig it up. That’s exactly where relining earns its keep: we fix the pipe from the inside and the listed garden wall never knows we were there.
The borough’s magnificent trees are, professionally speaking, our biggest local rival. The planes and horse chestnuts around Richmond Green and the park edges push fine roots into every available pipe joint looking for water, and a root-bound drain re-blocks on a schedule until the ingress point is found and fixed. A CCTV survey here is rarely boring. (For us. We accept this is a niche form of entertainment.)
There’s also a practical Richmond reality: with property values around Richmond Hill and Kew among the highest in the country, foul water backing up into a basement kitchen does eye-watering damage per hour. When something does go wrong, it’s worth it being fixed quickly and properly documented. We’re local, we answer 24/7, and we arrive genuinely pleased to see a difficult drain.
We cover all of Richmond (TW9, TW10) — from Richmond Park, Kew Gardens, Richmond Bridge and across Kew, Petersham, Ham. Being genuinely local means we already know what Richmond's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Richmond →