Repeat Blockage Surveys
The line that goes every few months, filmed end to end to find the reason instead of clearing it again.
Home/CCTV Drain Inspections
A CCTV drain inspection in Hermanus turns an argument into a measurement. The camera records what the defect is, how far along the line it sits, and how deep, which is everything you need before anybody lifts a paving slab.
Tell us why you want the line looked at. A repeat blockage, a property purchase and a dispute over responsibility are three different surveys.
All six produce a recording and a written report. None of them produce an opinion.
The line that goes every few months, filmed end to end to find the reason instead of clearing it again.
A sonde in the camera head, the run marked on the surface and the depth recorded before anybody breaks ground.
Displaced joints, collapses, root ingress and bellies holding standing water, each recorded with a distance.
The distance from the access point placed against the erf boundary, so responsibility is measured rather than argued.
A written condition report on the drainage before a transfer, which is the one defect a viewing cannot show you.
Kitchen waste runs and grease traps in guesthouses and restaurants, filmed before a service schedule is set.
Overstrand Municipality's own advice to residents on avoiding blocked drains ends with a line that is easy to skim past and worth reading twice: maintain your gutter, sewer and water pipes inside your erven. That is the whole responsibility question in nine words. The pipes inside your boundary are yours. The network past it is theirs.
The trouble is that the sentence is clear and the ground is not. Nobody can see where the boundary crosses a buried line. On a property where the connection was made forty years ago, where a driveway has since been laid over the top of it and a hedge has grown along it, the point where your responsibility ends is genuinely unknown to everybody involved. So when a line fails somewhere near it, the conversation becomes a negotiation rather than a fact, and the person who blinks first pays for the excavation.
A camera removes the negotiation entirely, because it does not just film the defect, it measures it. The counter on the reel records distance travelled from the access point the camera entered, and the sonde in the head lets the position be traced and marked on the surface with a depth. So the finding is not "there is a collapse somewhere down there". It is a collapse at eleven metres from the boundary manhole, at nine hundred millimetres deep, marked in paint on the paving. That is a fact anybody can check, and it sits either inside your erf or outside it.
The same measurement changes the repair as much as it changes the argument. A defect located to a metre is dug once, in one place, through one slab. A defect described as "somewhere along the run" is dug for, which in practice means two or three exploratory holes and a reinstatement bill larger than the pipe repair that eventually happens. On a property where the line runs under decking, a driveway or an established garden, that difference is usually larger than the survey cost several times over.
It is also the honest answer to the drain that keeps blocking. A line clearing perfectly and blocking again on a schedule is a line with a reason. If the same drain has blocked twice in a year, stop buying clearances and buy the survey instead. The third clearance costs roughly what finding the cause costs, and only one of the two ever ends.
A survey is evidence or it is nothing. These keep it evidence.
Recording, stills and report handed over, not described to you at the vehicle and kept on our reel.
Every defect gets a measurement from a named access point, so it can be dug for once.
Inside your erf or outside it, said in the report, including when the answer costs us the repair.
A blocked line is cleared before it is filmed. We will not sell you footage of the inside of a plug.
What does a CCTV drain inspection cost in Hermanus?
A single line survey is quoted as a fixed figure that includes the recording and a written report. It is more than a clearance and less than a repair, and it is the cheapest thing on the list compared with digging in the wrong place once.
Why would I pay for a survey instead of just clearing it again?
Because the second clearance costs about the same as the survey and buys you nothing you did not already have. A line that blocks repeatedly has a reason: a displaced joint, a collapse, a root, a belly holding water, or a fall that was never right. Clearing it treats the symptom on a schedule.
Do I get to see the footage?
Yes, and you get to keep it. The recording, still images of anything found, and the depth and distance to each defect from a known access point. That is the deliverable, not a verbal summary at the vehicle.
Can a camera tell you whose pipe the problem is on?
That is one of the main reasons to use one. The camera measures distance from the access point it entered, so a defect can be placed against the erf boundary rather than argued about. Overstrand asks owners to maintain the pipes inside their own erven, and a survey establishes precisely which side of that line the fault sits on.
Will a survey work if the line is completely blocked?
No, and anybody who says otherwise is selling you a survey of standing water. The line has to be cleared first so the camera can travel it. That is why a clearance and a survey are usually quoted together where a repeat blockage is the reason for calling.
Should I get a survey before buying a property here?
On an older property with mature trees over the line, it is worth far more than it costs. Drain defects are invisible at a viewing, expensive to put right, and almost never disclosed because the seller genuinely does not know. A survey turns that into a known quantity before you sign.
Can you find where a drain actually runs?
Yes. The camera head carries a sonde and the route can be traced and marked on the surface with the depth noted. Useful before anybody breaks ground for a pool, a foundation or a driveway, which is when drains normally get discovered the hard way.
What if the survey shows nothing wrong?
Then you have paid for a clean bill of health on a line you were worried about, and that is a legitimate result rather than a wasted fee. It also means the repeat blockages are behavioural rather than structural, and we will tell you what is going into the pipe instead.
Get In Touch
Tell us why the line needs looking at and roughly how old the property is. If it is a repeat blockage, say how often, because that changes what we expect to find.