One of the most common blockages that drain cleaning companies in London find is caused by the infiltration of roots into the pipe network. Roots work there way into the pipe network through the small cracks in the pipe’s structure. And once they find an easy source of water they quickly multiply, blocking the drain.

Root intrusion into a drainage system couldn’t happen if the pipe was not damaged or defective in any way. The pipe needs to be in good working order and have no cracks or disturbance to work effectively all the time.

If a pipe does have cracks, not only does the chance of further damage increase, contamination from the water can enter the surrounding environment. In the worst cases, the water can wash away the soil around the pipe, which can lead to subsidence and further drainage pipe damage.

The drainage engineers in London can usually tell if root intrusion is the cause of a drainage blockage. They can insert a CCTV camera into the drain, which travels along the drain length relaying images to the engineer on the surface. The images can then be used to produce a report on the overall condition of the pipe and hence make the necessary recommendations to solve the drainage problem.

Many drainage problems can be solved quickly by knowing how to remove the blockage and by using a little elbow grease. However, when the drainage issue continues to get worse, despite your best efforts, it might be time to call in the drainage experts.

Drainage experts in London can do everything, from removing a small blockage to excavating a broken drainage pipe and instigating a pipe repair. And if your best efforts at removing the problem are coming to nothing, they will be able to help you out.

Using the very latest technology, drainage experts in London can look inside your drainage pipes and view what is actually causing the drain blockage. When the drainage experts look inside your drainage pipes, they get to see what’s happening in real time. This can be great news for drainage customers, as the time taken to diagnose a problem and rectify it has been dramatically reduced.

Due to the introduction of CCTV surveys, the likelihood for excavation has also been dramatically reduced. Where once a team of drainage engineers in London may have had to excavate a section of pipe to find out what was causing the blockage, they now only have to insert a CCTV camera into the drainage system and images are relayed to the surface which can be easily interpreted.

Over the past few decades, drain repair methods have improved beyond comprehension. Where in the past a problem with a faulty drain would have led to the drain being excavated and replaced, there are now a whole host of different solutions drainage companies can use to instigate a drain repair.

One of the recently used tools which has proved invaluable for drainage companies is the CCTV survey. Drainage companies are now able to see directly into the drainage system using a small camera which is inserted into the drain. Some companies even have remote controlled robots which can be inserted into the drainage system and then ‘driven’ along the drain to find the problem area.

Using CCTV cameras, the drainage company can visually see the problems with the drain so accurate repairs can be made. In the past a drain may have been excavated when it only needed jetting or intrusive roots trimmed. And sometimes whole lengths of drains were excavated to find a problem, when only a section of a few feet would now need to be replaced. Errors like these have now been eradicated and thanks to detailed surveys many of the jobs that would have taken a huge amount of time previously now only take a matter of hours to solve.

The first line of defence that any drain cleaning and inspection company will use to solve a blocked drain is drain jetting. During this process the drainage company will insert a jet of high pressure water into the drainage system to try to break down the clog, so waste water can flow freely again. However, on occasions drain jetting is not enough to remove the blockage so further investigation may need to be carried out.

When drain jetting fails, the drainage engineers will usually need to visually see what the problem is before attempting a solution. And the way they do this is with a CCTV survey. In a CCTV drain survey a small camera is inserted into the drainage system. The drainage engineer works the camera into the system and video images are relayed to a computer monitor. These images can then be used to diagnose the problem. Problems that may be encountered if traditional jetting has failed include root intrusion or even drain collapse.

Using the CCTV survey the drain maintenance engineer can formulate a plan of action and can get to know where the problem is located to within a few feet. They can then carry out the necessary repairs to the drainage pipe so the waste water can flow freely again.

You’ve just had a problem with a blocked drain. What do you do next? You carry out a CCTV survey to find out what exactly caused the blockage. Then carry out the necessary measures to solve the problem once and for all.

A CCTV drain survey involves inserting a small CCTV camera into your drainage system and inspecting the images that the camera feeds back. The idea behind a CCTV survey is to do away with costly large scale excavations to look for problems.

CCTV surveys map sewer lines, track the source of the problem and expose obstacles lodged in the drain. They identify faults and locate the exact position and depth of these faults. If the problem is diagnosed early, you can have it corrected before it turns serious, thus saving you the money and the time an emergency sewer excavation would have caused.

Poor construction, tree root invasion, ground activity and leaky pipes are some of the faults that a CCTV scan is able to detect.

CCTV surveys can also be carried out before buying a home. These are known as pre home purchase surveys. It is now common practice for potential homeowners to carry out a drain survey before buying a home, so as to inspect the condition of the drains. A potential homebuyer couldn’t be more wrong in thinking of underground drains as unimportant. Drainage systems can be extremely complex, and any remedial work can be costly if it includes complete excavation and replacement of pipes. Underground drains must be looked at as a part of the overall value of the property.