CCTV drain survey by camera prices ?

Ogre_De_Flamme

What is the current price of a cctv drain survey by camera for a house ?
How is the system accessed when there is no man hole cover and no access cap on the soil stack, just a few drain grids into clay pipe ?
Contributions only from personal or professional experience please.

ormus

approx 130 quid min.

cheaper to slot in an access branch into the soil stack pipe.

Limara

why do you need a camera survey? if it is because you already have a block then you will have to clear it before camera survey as you need a clear pipe to camera survey!
Are you sure you dont have a manhole anywhere even if your drain runs into next door you could get in through that manhole.
Are you sure you havent got one even if its covered by something ( slabs and grass the most comon covers over manholes either deliberate or just a out of control garden growing over it! or if the house has been extended the cover could be internal ) or if its a very old property ( victiorian ) the actual cover could be a bit of york stone as a cover!
Hubby has 25+ years experience in drainiage and he says its VERY rare to have no access as you describe unless its a very very old property.
As far as price is concerned that will vary greatly from area to area ring round the companies and see if any one is doing fixed price as what could on surface appear as being a short survey could end up taking a very long time!
An access panel into the stack would also allow you to see if you do actually have a manhole any where.

Christyt

I'm considering a CCTV drain survey too but have the same problem of no access. The previous owner built a conservatory on the back of the house and didnt build in access to the manhole.

Reason for doing it is that one of our guttering pipes, which goes into a clay pipe in the front of the house and then disappears under drive was full of roots. We pulled out a large sausage of roots but it's probably a sign of damage to the pipe somewhere.

I'm wondering whether we might have to pay them to auger the roots out before they can do a survey.

In short - discovered a problem with roots in pipe at front of house in guttering pipe going into ceramic ground pipe.
No idea if this pipe connects to main drain or some sort of soak away. But the ceramic pipe makes me think it might be connected to main system?

No obviousl problems out back but no access anyway due to conservatory.

If anyone can enlighten on best way to tackle this i'd be grateful!

Christyt

Oh - by the way - I was quoted £75 plus VAT for full CCTV survey. But they don't know about lack of access yet.
Cheers

WobblyDog

I had a drain survey done about 5 years ago, I think it cost about £150 for about an hour's work on a Saturday morning.

Places like HSS do hire out drain cameras, but if you have access issues, then the expertise of an experienced drain surveyor might be useful.

As an aside, I've recently used a cheap CCTV camera (fitted with LEDs), about £30 from Maplin, waterproofed with duct tape, to do a superficial inspection of some of the buried pipes that my rainwater downpipes feed into. It wouldn't go much past the first bend in the pipe, but it reassured me that there were no obvious problems and I didn't need to spend more money on a proper inspection.

Christyt

Thanks - I decided to cancel the appointment. Talked it through with surveyor and he said as we didn't have any obvious problems with main drain it was probably best to leave. Re the roots in the pipes he said we could call him back to check it out separately - but basically CCTV was not the way to go in this case.

docmatt

Drainage_experts wrote: »

ranked no1 in the uk by freeindex

I like the fact that 14 of the Freeindex reviews have been submitted by someone with the same IP address as someone else who reviewed the company.:T

docmatt

PM from Drainagexperts who spammed this thread with advertising and has since had their account removed:



Thanks for the constructive PM. Now go spam someone else.

Christyt

Nice - what a mountain over a molehill.

27col

I am intrigued to know how you go about doing a cctv survey if you don't have any access.