What a drain camera shows that a plunger never will

Howzit Cape Town. Got an old clay or galvanised line? Here's how we tell whether to reline or dig up a drain. We send a camera down first. It shows us the pipe and the hairball in it, before any work starts.

Interview by Tomek Korzeniewski · with Lwazi Mthembu, Plumber and drain specialist

Key takeaways

• A camera inspection shows why a drain keeps blocking, not just that it is blocked
• A camera inspection costs less than two or three call-outs to clear the same drain

What a CCTV drain inspection actually shows you

A CCTV drain inspection shows you the inside of your pipe, live on a screen. That happens before anyone decides what to do next. It's a small waterproof camera on the end of a long flexible push rod. He feeds it in through a rodding eye or an inspection chamber.

From there the picture gets useful. Mthembu says he pushes the camera along the pipe. He sees the inside of it live and the whole run gets recorded. There's a transmitter in the camera head too. So he can stand on the lawn with a locator and tell you exactly where the camera sits.

Why does this matter? The choice between relining and digging turns on the pipe's condition, not on how often it blocks. The screen shows the real state of things. That real state is usually hiding underground. It sits in a drain that keeps backing up for a reason no plunger ever reaches.

Why clearing a blockage doesn't stop it coming back

Clearing a blockage tells you nothing about why it happened. If the same drain blocks every three months, something is causing it. Clearing alone never finds what.

He lists the usual suspects. Maybe it's roots. Maybe the pipe has sagged and there's a belly where water sits. Maybe a joint has pulled apart. Rod it or jet it and the water flows again. Everybody's happy. Then in three months you're on the phone again.

The camera shows him why it keeps happening. Only then can the cause be fixed instead of the symptom.

How tree roots get into an old clay sewer line

So how do the roots get in? Through the joints.

Each joint was sealed with mortar or a rubber ring. After fifty years, he says, the seal fails. A root finds the tiny bit of moisture at the joint and grows in. It becomes a hairball in the pipe. Then toilet paper catches on it, fat catches on it and the line blocks.

So the blockage you see is really the end of a slow story underground. The good news is that the story leaves marks above ground too, signs you can check for yourself before you call anyone.

Signs your sewer line has root intrusion

Start with the drains. The clearest sign is slow drains all over the house, not just one sink. Mthembu says gurgling in the toilet when the washing machine empties points the same way.

Then look at the garden. A wet patch, or a very green patch, along the line of the pipe is a tell. So is a smell outside near the gully and blockages that keep coming back after they were cleared.

If you've got a big tree within ten metres of your sewer line and any of those signs, there's a good chance roots are in there. Spotting it is one thing. Knowing whose job it is to fix it is the next.

Who looks after what: your private drain or the municipal sewer

So whose pipe is it? The one on your side of the boundary is yours to look after. The municipal sewer it connects to belongs to the council. A camera run usually shows you where that line falls.

Live in a sectional title scheme? Then there's another layer. Some schemes need body corporate sign-off before relining work goes ahead. Worth checking that early rather than late.

Now you know the pipe is yours. You know its condition too. With both of those settled, the real decision opens up. You have more than one way to fix it.

Reline or dig up a drain: the paths open to you after an inspection

If it's a small root problem at one joint, sometimes he cuts the roots out with a jetter and a root-cutting head, then monitors it. That's the cheap option. He's honest, though: the roots will come back, because the joint is still open.

The second path is to dig up and replace the broken section. Fine if the pipe is under a lawn. Not fine if it runs under your driveway, a stone terrace or a swimming pool.

The third path is drain relining. It means making a new pipe inside the old one without digging. Which path is right depends on what the camera showed, which is why a drain camera inspection comes first. For wider background, see Prevent blocked sewers (City of Cape Town).

How a liner actually goes into the pipe

So the camera has shown what's going on. Relining builds a new pipe inside the old one and he walks through it step by step. First he jets the old pipe clean and cuts out all the roots. Then he cameras it again to make sure it's clean.

Next comes the liner itself. It's a sleeve soaked in resin, pulled into the pipe from the access point and inflated so it presses against the old pipe walls. The resin cures and hardens into a smooth, seamless pipe inside the old one.

With no joints, Mthembu says, roots can't get back in. Does it make the pipe smaller? A little, a few millimetres. But because the inside is smooth and the old root lumps are gone, he's found it usually flows better than before. Even so, relining isn't the answer in every case and the honest plumber tells you when it isn't.

When a liner isn't the right fix

Some pipes are past lining. When one has already collapsed, or lost its shape badly, a liner can't help.

He names the other case too. When a pipe sags badly and holds a belly of water, a liner just follows the belly, so water still sits there. Digging is the honest answer in both situations.

The camera tells you which case you're in before anyone spends money. It's the whole point of doing the camera first, Mthembu says. See the pipe, then decide. Don't let anybody tell you they need to dig before they've shown you the line on a screen.

Ready when you are

For more on this, see Drain relining. If you would like to take this further, Drain camera inspection is the place to start.

About the expert

Lwazi Mthembu, Plumber and drain specialist.

Frequently asked questions

Is drain relining actually worth the money?

It's worth it when the pipe itself is still round and sound enough to line, because then you get a smooth new pipe without digging up a lawn, driveway or pool deck. It's not worth it if the pipe has already collapsed or sagged into a belly, since a liner over a bent or broken pipe just follows the same fault. A camera inspection is what tells you which case you're in before you spend anything.

What's the best way to clear a blocked drain line?

Jetting or rodding clears most blockages on the day and that's often all a drain needs. But if the same drain keeps blocking every few months, clearing it again and again is just treating the symptom. At that point the better move is to find out why it's blocking, usually with a camera, rather than keep paying to clear the same spot.

Should the holes in a drainage pipe face up or down?

This mostly matters for stormwater or French drain pipe, not sewer lines and the answer is down. Holes facing down let water seep into the surrounding gravel and soil, while holes facing up just let soil and grit wash straight into the pipe and clog it. If you're not sure which type of pipe you're dealing with, that's worth checking before you lay anything in a trench.

How do you tie a new drain into an existing line?

A new drain joins an old line at an inspection chamber or a proper saddle junction, never a straight hole cut into the side of the pipe. The join has to sit at the right fall so water moves the right way without pooling at the joint. Getting this wrong is exactly the kind of weak joint that lets roots and silt in later, so it's worth having it checked rather than guessed at.

Will you rush my job because you're already thinking about the next one?

No. A camera inspection takes the time it takes to see the whole run and show you what's on screen and relining takes the time the jetting, re-check and curing steps need. Rushing either one means missing the actual cause of a blockage, which is the whole reason to do a camera check in the first place.

Will I be overcharged for something simple, like a leaking tap?

You get a written quote before any work starts, so a leaking tap is quoted as a leaking tap, not padded out. If a camera check shows something bigger is going on, you'll see it on the screen first and get a separate quote for that, rather than finding it added to the bill after the fact.

Will you actually turn up when you say you will?

Yes, we book a time and arrive at it. If anything changes on our side, we'd rather tell you by WhatsApp before the time than leave you waiting at home with water on the floor.

Could I end up with an inflated invoice for work that doesn't even fix the problem?

No. The quote you get is split out by the work involved, so there's no vague lump sum hiding extras. And because we show you the actual fault on the camera before deciding on a fix, you're not paying for a repair that guesses at what's wrong underground.

Will I get paperwork for my insurance claim, not just a repair?

Yes, the camera footage we record is yours to keep, along with a plain explanation of what it shows. That's the kind of record an insurer wants to see, rather than just a invoice saying a repair happened.

If I message you, will I actually hear back quickly?

We check WhatsApp through the day and reply with what we think is going on and roughly what the visit will cost, before anyone comes out. If you send a photo of the problem, that reply is usually quicker and more useful.

Am I going to reach a call centre, or an actual person?

An actual person. There's no call centre routing you through menus, you're talking to someone who knows the job.

Will the plumber who arrives actually have the right tools and know-how to sort it in one visit?

For a drain problem, the camera and the jetter are standard kit on the van, so the inspection and the first fix usually happen in the same visit. Whether the whole job finishes in one visit depends on what the camera finds. A clean joint repair is quick, a collapsed section that needs digging takes longer and you'll know which one you're dealing with before work starts.

About the author

From Klipspringer Plumbing

• Drain camera inspection in Cape Town: see the blockage before we dig

  See the fault on screen before anyone digs, and keep the footage.

• Drain relining in Cape Town: no digging, no guesswork

  Camera finds the cracked pipe and we fix it from inside, no digging up the garden.