CCTV drain surveys: when they are worth it and what you actually get
A camera survey earns its money in three situations: buying a property, repeat blockages and insurance claims. What it shows and what you get.
Read the guideRoots find old clay joints, thicken into a mass and catch everything passing. Jetting clears them; unless the joint is repaired they come back.
Roots get in through joints and cracks in old pipework, drawn by moisture and nutrients. A cutting jet clears the mass and restores the bore, but roots regrow through the same defect, so the lasting fix is repairing or lining the damaged section — which is why a camera survey should follow the clearance.
It does not force its way through sound pipe. What happens is subtler: a hairline crack, a joint that has opened slightly with ground movement, or an old clay collar whose mortar has perished, lets out a trace of moisture and warm, nutrient-rich vapour. To a root system in dry summer ground that is a signal, and a fine root follows it in.
Once inside, conditions are ideal — constant moisture and nutrients — and that fine root thickens and branches into a mass that fills the bore. The mass itself does not usually block the drain. What blocks it is everything that snags on the mass: paper, fat, wipes, grit.
Older clay pipework laid in short lengths with many joints is by far the most at risk, and a great deal of drainage in older Derbyshire and north Nottinghamshire property is exactly that. Pitch fibre and early concrete runs suffer too. Modern plastic drainage with sealed push-fit joints is far more resistant — not immune, but it takes a real defect to let a root in.
Species matter less than proximity and thirst. Willow, poplar and ash are notorious; so is any large tree or vigorous hedge within range of the run. Shallow drains under lawn are more exposed than deep ones.
Any drain that blocks on a cycle has a physical cause, and roots are near the top of the list. A camera is the only way to confirm it.
High-pressure water jetting with a cutting nozzle is the standard answer and it works well. The nozzle shears the root mass out and strips the pipe wall back to full bore, which also removes the fat and silt that had built up around it. Compared with rodding — which punches a hole through the mass and leaves the rest in place — it is a proper clearance rather than a temporary one.
What jetting cannot do is seal the way in. Cut the roots out and the plant, which is still alive and still thirsty, grows back toward the same defect. Depending on the species and the size of the opening that can take anything from a few months to a few years.
The permanent fix is to repair the defect the roots are using.
Patch lining is the usual answer for a single bad joint or a short damaged length: a resin-impregnated liner is set in place inside the existing pipe and cured, sealing that section without excavation. It is quick, there is no reinstatement to pay for, and for most domestic root problems it is the sensible choice.
Full lining suits a run with defects along its length, relining the whole pipe from one access to the next.
Excavation and replacement is for runs that have collapsed, dropped badly or deformed. Lining needs a reasonably sound host pipe; where that has gone, there is nothing to line.
Removing the tree is occasionally the right answer and more often not. It is drastic, it can be subject to protection orders, and on clay soils removing a mature tree brings its own ground movement risks to buildings. Repair the pipe first.
Chemical root killers poured down a toilet have little effect on a mature mass and are a poor idea on any off-mains system, where the same chemistry goes straight into a tank that depends on bacteria. Rodding on a schedule is money spent annually on a problem that could be fixed once.
Jet it clear, survey it immediately afterwards while the pipe is clean enough to see, and price the repair from what the camera shows. Doing the survey before the clearance often shows nothing but root mass; doing it after shows the defect that let them in. We carry jetting and camera kit on the same van across Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Sheffield and Nottinghamshire — more on that here, or call 07884 111 641.
The time to deal with roots is before they exist. If you know roughly where your drains run — and if you do not, a trace will tell you in an afternoon — keep new trees and vigorous hedging well clear, and think about mature size rather than what is in the pot. A whip that looks harmless now is a problem in fifteen years, and nobody ever remembers what was planted where.
On a property where the drainage is old clay and the garden is being redesigned, it is worth marking the runs on the plan. It costs nothing at that stage and it saves a conversation about excavating a patio later.
Roots do not only attack house drains. They will find a drainage field too, where the attraction is far stronger: constant moisture and nutrient-rich liquid in gravel trenches that are easy to grow into. A field with roots through it loses capacity and eventually seals, and unlike a pipe there is nothing to line — a rooted field is rebuilt.
That is why separation distances from trees apply to the field as much as to the pipework, and why a willow planted for screening at the bottom of a paddock is a worse idea than it looks. If you have a field and a tree problem, deal with it before the field is the thing being replaced.
Some policies cover accidental damage to underground services, others exclude gradual causes like root ingress. A recorded survey locating the defect is what any claim will be assessed on, so get one either way.
You can, and some people do. It costs more over five years than fixing the joint once, and each blockage carries the risk of a backup indoors at an inconvenient moment.
Further than most people expect — well beyond the canopy of the tree. Proximity helps, but a drain twenty metres from a thirsty willow is not safe by distance alone.
Slightly, but a lined pipe has a smooth bore and usually flows better than the rough, root-scarred clay it replaced. For domestic runs the reduction is not a practical problem.
Septic tank emptying, installations, servicing and drainage across Derbyshire, Sheffield and Yorkshire — 24/7.
A camera survey earns its money in three situations: buying a property, repeat blockages and insurance claims. What it shows and what you get.
Read the guideA few sensible checks will clear a fair number of blocked drains without a call-out — and the rest will tell you quickly that you need a jetting unit.
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