The hill's period houses are being extended and dug out at a steady rate, and a survey before the works is the one thing that stops a new basement meeting a cracked clay run. On the converted terraces below, the camera settles the shared-drain question with footage rather than an argument.
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 Wimbledon
- 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 Wimbledon
Two towns in one postcode: the Village on the hill with long runs under big gardens, and the terraces and flats below it on shared Victorian clay.
Wimbledon, SW19, is two places with different pipes. Up the hill, the Village and the Common are large Victorian and Edwardian houses on big plots, with long private runs, mature gardens and the Common’s oaks exploring every joint. Down the hill, the Broadway, South Wimbledon and Wimbledon Park are Victorian and Edwardian terraces, many converted into flats, plus post-war estates and new blocks around the station. We ask which Wimbledon you are in before we choose the van.
Hill calls are about distance and roots. A blockage on a thirty-metre run under a lawn is nowhere near a gully, rods will not reach it, and the camera has to find it first. Repeat blockages are almost always a root mat at a joint the clay soil has opened, and lining that joint is what ends the annual visit. With basements and extensions going in all over the hill, a survey before the works is the cheapest decision in the project.
Down-the-hill calls are about sharing. Converted terraces put four kitchens on one Victorian run and the ground-floor flat is the first to know when the top flat pours the fat away. We clear from the external chamber, jet rather than rod, and give the freeholder footage rather than an opinion. We cover all of SW19 at any hour from the Putney and Kingston side of our patch.
We cover all of Wimbledon (SW19) — from Wimbledon Village, the Common, the Broadway and across Southfields, Raynes Park, Putney. Being genuinely local means we already know what Wimbledon's drains are made of, and how fast we can be at your door.More about drains in Wimbledon →