A camera goes into the pipe, records what is there, and produces a graded report. That is the whole idea. What differs between firms is what you are handed at the end of it.
We lift every accessible cover on the property and work out the layout before anything goes into a pipe. Then a camera on a rod or a crawler goes into each run and travels it as far as it goes — to the boundary, to the public sewer connection, or to whatever stops it.
You watch the screen with us. Nothing is saved for a written summary later; if there is something to see, you see it at the same moment we do, and you can ask about it there and then.
Each defect is coded to MSCC5 — the Manual of Sewer Condition Classification — and graded for severity. Coding matters because it is a shared language: any drainage contractor, engineer or insurer reads the same code the same way.
Every defect is located by distance from a named access point and by depth. Those two numbers are what turn a report into something a contractor can quote from without a second site visit.
About an hour for a typical Birchwood house. Larger properties, several access points, or a run that needs clearing first will take longer — and we say so before we attend rather than after.
The written report and the full narrated footage reach you the same day.
Before buying a property, when a blockage keeps returning, when a building is cracking and the cause is unclear, when an insurer asks for one, and after repair work that you cannot otherwise check.
In Birchwood there is one more: if your house dates from the original build and nobody has ever looked at the drainage, the pipe is now at an age where knowing is worth more than assuming.