Drain cleaning
The line gets cleared before the lens can see anything. Often the whole answer on a first blockage.
Learn moreDrains and sewers
Sewer camera inspection: stop guessing what the pipe is doing
A camera turns a sewer problem from an argument into a picture. Footage of the actual defect, at a measured distance from the cleanout, is what separates a repair you can price from a repair somebody is estimating.
Lines are open right now:
(833) 472-2088
Recorded footage, distances marked, options explained.
You get the footage
A recording and a written finding, not a verbal verdict.
Distance and depth
Every defect located and marked so digging is precise.
Before you buy
On a pre-purchase inspection the lateral is rarely looked at.
Before you spend
Cheaper than the wrong repair by an order of magnitude.
Reasons to look
Five situations where the camera pays for itself
The line has backed up more than once. A single blockage can be a bad week. A second one in the same year is the pipe telling you something structural, and clearing it again without looking is buying the same afternoon over and over.
You are buying a house. A standard home inspection stops at the fixtures. Nobody puts a camera down the lateral unless you ask, and the lateral is the single most expensive plumbing component on a property. On any house built before the 1970s, or any house with mature trees between the building and the street, it is the cheapest piece of due diligence available.
Somebody has quoted you a replacement. Full lateral replacement is a five-figure conversation in many yards. Before agreeing to it, ask for footage that shows the defect, the distance reading at the defect, and why a spot repair or a liner will not do. A contractor confident in the diagnosis will hand it over.
The yard has changed. A sunken strip, a patch of lawn that greens up first every spring, a soft spot that never dries. Those are surface symptoms of a line losing its contents underneath.
You are about to build over it. A patio, a shop slab, an addition, a driveway extension. Anything permanent going on top of a lateral should be preceded by a look at what is underneath, because access afterwards costs whatever the surface cost to build.
A camera is a diagnostic, not a repair
An inspection tells you what is wrong, where it is and how deep. It does not clear a blockage and it will not push through one, a line full of standing water and solids has to be cleared before the lens can see anything. On a live backup, expect the sequence to be clear first, then inspect.
Buying a house? The inspection period is short.
Findings
What shows up on the screen, and what it means for the bill
Roots at a joint
A fine white curtain or a solid mat growing in at a specific point. In pre-1970s Idaho neighbourhoods, clay laterals with jointed sections every few feet, this is the most common finding by a wide margin. Cutting restores flow. The joint remains open, so it is a maintenance interval unless the joint gets sealed or the pipe gets lined.
Standing water in a belly
The camera runs into water and stays in it for several feet before climbing out. A dip in the line holds sewage; solids drop out in the dip and build. Cleaning empties it for a while. Only re-laying that section to grade fixes it, which is why identifying a belly changes the entire repair conversation.
An offset joint
One pipe section sitting proud of the next, so the lens shows a lip. Paper catches on the lip. Ground movement, frost or a tree did it. Minor offsets can be lined; severe ones need the section replaced.
Scale in cast iron
The inside looks like the roof of a cave, and the effective diameter can be half of what it should be. Jetting removes a lot of it and reveals whether there is pipe wall left underneath.
A hole, a crack, or daylight
Soil visible through the pipe wall, or a gap where a section has broken away. This is the finding that ends the debate about whether to repair.
Nothing wrong at all
Worth saying plainly, because it happens: a clean, continuous, correctly graded line with a single soft blockage upstream. That result is a good outcome and it is the reason to look before committing to anything larger.
The part that saves money
Finding the defect is half the value
A picture of a broken pipe is interesting. A picture of a broken pipe with a distance reading, a surface mark and a depth is actionable, and the difference between the two is the difference between one small excavation and a long exploratory trench.
Footage counter. The reel measures cable paid out, so every finding gets a distance from the entry point. Two hundred and thirty-one feet from the cleanout is a fact you can hold a contractor to.
Sonde and locator. The camera head transmits. A receiver above ground follows it and paints the route across the lawn, which also tells you where the line actually runs, frequently not where the plat says.
Depth reading. The same locator gives depth at the mark. Depth drives price more than almost anything else: shoring, spoil volume and excavation time all scale with it, and knowing you are at four feet rather than nine feet before quoting is the difference between two very different jobs.
A paint mark and a photograph. The mark on the ground, photographed with something permanent in frame, so the location survives the next rainstorm and the two weeks before work starts.
Locating matters most on the properties where digging blind is worst: mature landscaping in the North End, concrete driveways in Meridian and Nampa subdivisions, and rural properties where the run to a tank or main can be a hundred feet or more of unmarked ground.
Get the defect located and marked before anyone digs.
Real estate
The inspection nobody orders and everybody wishes they had
Idaho has been building and trading houses quickly, and a fair number of those houses sit on laterals older than the people buying them. The pattern we see repeatedly: the sale closes, the family moves in, the line backs up within the first winter, and the repair quote arrives at a moment when there is no money left and no seller to discuss it with.
What a pre-purchase sewer inspection covers: the building drain, the lateral out to the connection at the main or the tank, material and diameter, evidence of previous repairs, root intrusion, grade problems, and any point of structural failure, all recorded, with distances.
Where it is most worth doing. Anything built before 1975. Anything with a large tree between the house and the street. Anything with a basement, because the basement is where a failing line makes its point. Any rural property on septic, where the condition of the run to the tank is invisible and the tank's history is often unknown. Any house that has been vacant or a rental for years.
What to do with the result. Footage of root intrusion or a belly is a negotiating document. It is specific, it is dated, and it converts an open-ended worry into a number that can be discussed before closing rather than after.
Timing. The inspection period is short. It generally needs an accessible cleanout, water available and access to the yard, and it can be done alongside the general inspection on the same day.
Practicalities
What we need, and what a camera cannot do
An access point. Best case is an exterior cleanout. Failing that, an interior cleanout in the basement or crawl space, or a pulled toilet. Houses with no cleanout at all are common in older Idaho stock, and installing one is often worth doing on its own, it makes every future service call cheaper and faster.
A line that is not full. The lens sees nothing through standing sewage. A blocked line gets cleared first, either mechanically or with hydro jetting, then inspected.
Reasonable diameter. A mainline camera runs three inches and up. Small-diameter branch lines and tub arms need a smaller push camera, which has less reach and no locating sonde on some units.
Honest limits. A camera looks inside the pipe. It does not see through the pipe wall, it cannot pass a hard blockage or a fully collapsed section, and it cannot tell you how much wall thickness is left in a scaled iron line. It will not find a pressurised water leak either, that is leak detection, a completely different set of equipment.
Winter. Inspections run year round. In a hard freeze the practical constraints are frozen cleanout caps, snow over the route making surface marking harder, and frost depth complicating any excavation that follows. If the reason for the inspection is a winter backup, the inspection is the right call anyway, the alternative is guessing while the ground is at its least forgiving.
No cleanout on the property? Ask what access takes.
How it runs
What an inspection visit looks like
Usually an hour to ninety minutes on a straightforward lateral, longer if the line has to be cleared first.
1. Access and a quick history
We find or open a cleanout, ask what the symptoms have been and how long they have run, and check the fixtures that back up first. That conversation shapes where we look.
2. Run the reel, mark the ground
The camera goes down to the main or the tank with the distance counter running. Anything of interest gets recorded, then located and marked on the surface with a depth reading.
3. Findings, options and prices
You get the footage, the distances and a plain explanation of what is wrong. Where a repair is needed you get the realistic options, spot repair, lining, bursting or replacement, with what drives the cost of each.
Coverage
Camera work across all 82 communities
Inspection reels travel with the trucks, so a camera run is available anywhere we dispatch, Treasure Valley subdivisions with concrete over the lateral, the older housing stock in Pocatello and Idaho Falls, cabins and seasonal homes in the mountain valleys, and rural properties on septic along the western border and through the Panhandle.
Questions
Sewer camera inspection questions
It is priced as a diagnostic visit, and the range depends on access and whether the line has to be cleared first. An accessible exterior cleanout on a dry line is the cheap end. Pulling a toilet for access, or clearing a blocked line before the camera can travel, adds to it.
The contractor gives you the number on the phone before dispatch. Set against the cost of a wrong excavation, or a lateral replacement you did not need, it is the least expensive decision in the whole sequence.
Yes, ask for it and expect it. A recording, the distance readings for anything found, and a written summary. If a contractor will not hand over footage of a defect they are quoting a repair for, that tells you something useful.
No. The head is pushed on a semi-rigid cable and it stops at anything solid. A line has to be cleared before it can be inspected, which is why a backup call usually starts with mechanical cleaning or jetting and finishes with the camera.
That order is also the useful one: clearing tells you the line can flow, and the camera then tells you why it stopped.
No. A sewer camera works inside drain pipes, which run at atmospheric pressure and are big enough for a camera head. A pressurised water supply line is too small and the problem is different, that is acoustic and pressure work. See leak detection and main water line repair.
Common in older Idaho houses. Access options are an interior cleanout if one exists, a removed toilet, or occasionally a vent stack on the roof for a partial view.
Installing an exterior cleanout is worth considering on its own merits. It makes every future inspection and cleaning faster and cheaper, and it gives you a place to relieve a backup before it comes up through a basement floor drain.
An hour to ninety minutes for a normal lateral with good access, including locating and marking. Add time if the line needs clearing, if access has to be created, or if the run is unusually long, rural properties with a hundred feet or more to a tank take longer.
Necessary is your call. What is true is that a general home inspection does not include it, that the lateral is the most expensive single plumbing item on the property, and that once the sale closes the problem is entirely yours.
On older housing, on lots with large trees, and on rural septic properties, the case is strong. On a five-year-old house on municipal sewer with no trees, it is a reasonable thing to skip.
The plumber inspects the building drain and the run out to the tank, which is ordinary plumbing. The tank itself, the distribution box and the drain field belong to a septic contractor. Establishing which side of that boundary your problem sits on is usually the first thing the camera settles. See septic system plumbing.
Second backup this year deserves a camera, not another cable.
Look before you dig, and before you buy
One recorded inspection replaces every guess in the conversation. Lines are open around the clock across all 82 communities we serve.
(833) 472-2088