A riverside clay run that has blocked twice is telling you about a joint the water table has moved. The camera finds it, and on the island or a riverside plot it also tells us whether the fix can be done from the chamber or needs the boat-and-barrow approach.
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 Thames Ditton
- 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 Thames Ditton
Riverside village opposite Hampton Court: a high water table, village-centre clay and an island with its own drainage puzzles.
Thames Ditton is the riverside village in KT7 facing Hampton Court, a Georgian and Victorian High Street, cottages along the water, Thames Ditton Island, and 1930s and post-war streets spreading towards Hinchley Wood and Weston Green. The river is the drain nerd’s headline: it keeps the water table high, it keeps the ground around old clay pipes damp all year, and once a winter it lifts enough silt into the joints to close a run that behaved all summer.
Village-centre calls are mostly that. A gully off the High Street that has been fine since March backs up in the first wet November week, and the camera finds a joint with a lip and a little fan of silt behind it. Clearing is quick; lining the joint is what stops next year’s repeat.
The island and the riverside plots are their own adventure. Access is on foot, the runs are long, and the fix has to be done from the chamber because nobody is digging a riverside garden. We bring the long-reach kit, we reline rather than excavate, and we have been known to arrive by the footbridge with a camera reel on a sack truck. We cover Thames Ditton, Long Ditton and Weston Green at any hour.
We cover all of Thames Ditton (KT7) — from the High Street, Thames Ditton Island, Giggs Hill Green and across Esher, Long Ditton, Hampton Court. Being genuinely local means we already know what Thames Ditton's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Thames Ditton →