Underground
Sewer Scope Inspection
A camera down the line finds roots, bellies, cracks and collapses before they become your problem, and sewer repairs are rarely small.
The sewer lateral runs from the house to the main under your yard, and nothing in a standard home inspection can see inside it. It is one of the few systems where a failure means excavation.
A sewer scope puts a camera down the line through a cleanout and records the whole run. You see the condition of the pipe on video rather than taking anybody’s word for it.
What the camera finds
- Root intrusion, tree roots entering at joints, the most common cause of blockage.
- Cracks and breaks, from soil movement, settlement or corrosion.
- Bellies and sags, low sections where waste collects instead of draining.
- Corrosion and deterioration, especially in clay, cast iron and Orangeburg pipe.
- Misaligned or disjointed pipe, offsets that catch debris and obstruct flow.
- Pipe material and diameter, which tells you a lot about remaining service life.
When it matters most
- Any home built before modern PVC, clay and Orangeburg lines are on borrowed time.
- Mature trees anywhere near the line.
- Any history of slow drains or backups.
- Honestly, any home purchase. The cost of the scope is a rounding error against the cost of a line replacement.
Finding the cleanout
The camera needs a way in, and that way is normally a cleanout: a capped pipe stub giving direct access to the sewer lateral.
- Outside, usually within a few feet of the foundation on the side the plumbing runs, sometimes buried under mulch or grass.
- Inside, in a crawl space or basement, often at the base of the main stack.
- On older houses, occasionally nowhere at all, because the original plumber never installed one.
If your inspector cannot find an accessible cleanout, you are told before the appointment rather than being charged for an inspection that could not happen. Where there is no cleanout, a plumber can install one, and on a house old enough to lack one that is usually worth doing anyway.
Schedule your inspection
Online booking, or call the office for your market and talk to a person.
See it in practice
How it works
How the inspection runs
The camera goes in through a cleanout, the accessible pipe stub that lets a plumber reach the lateral. From there it travels the length of the line toward the municipal main, or as far as the pipe allows, recording the whole run as it goes.
You get the footage along with the findings. That matters when you take the result to a plumber for a repair quote, because a quote is only as good as the evidence behind it. You can see a sample sewer scope report before you book.
Where the camera stops is itself a finding. A line the camera cannot pass usually means a collapse, a heavy root mass or a severe offset, and that is information worth having while the house still belongs to somebody else.
What the pipe is made of tells you a lot
Clay
Common in houses built before the 1970s. Joined in short sections, which hands roots a seam every few feet to find, and brittle once it has been in the ground for decades.
Cast iron
Durable, but it corrodes from the inside out. Scale build-up narrows the bore and the roughened interior catches everything that goes down the line.
Orangeburg
A bituminized fiber pipe used from the 1940s into the early 1970s. It deforms under load and is effectively at the end of its service life wherever it is still in the ground.
PVC
Modern and generally trouble free, but not immune. Bellies from poor bedding, offsets from settlement and damage from later excavation all still happen.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
What if there is no accessible cleanout?
Access is required to run the camera. If we cannot find an accessible entry point we will tell you before the appointment rather than charging you for an inspection we cannot perform.
Do I get the video?
Yes. The recorded footage is reviewed and findings documented, so you can show it to a plumber for a repair quote.
Is this included in a package?
Sewer scope is included in the Platinum package, and can be added to any inspection.
How much does a sewer repair cost?
That is a plumber’s quote, not ours, but line replacement typically runs into the thousands, which is exactly why the scope is worth doing before you own the house.
How long does a sewer scope take?
Typically well under an hour where there is an accessible cleanout, and it is done during the same visit as the home inspection rather than on a separate day.
Can you scope a house on a septic system?
A sewer scope is for houses connected to a public sewer. Septic is a different system and not a service we offer.
What if the camera cannot reach the main?
That is reported as exactly what it is. An obstruction that stops the camera is usually a root mass, a collapse or a severe offset, and it tells you to get a plumber’s opinion before closing rather than after.
Is a sewer scope worth it on a newer house?
Often yes, for different reasons. New lines fail from installation problems rather than age: bellies from poor bedding, construction debris left in the pipe and damage from later trenching across the yard.
Ready to schedule?
Book online, or call the office for your market.