Why Fulham properties get drainage faults
Fulham is street after street of late-Victorian terraces, most with side-return extensions and a good number converted into flats. Loft conversions and rear extensions are widespread, and both routinely build over the original drain line.
You cannot repair what you cannot see. A camera survey turns a guess about the state of a drain into a record of exactly what is there, where it is and how bad it is.
Because the housing stock is so uniform, so are the faults: root ingress at clay joints under front gardens, grease and fat in kitchen runs, and rainwater from newly paved areas overloading gullies at the rear.
Our approach in Fulham
A survey is only useful if it is done systematically, so we cover the whole run rather than the first few metres.
- Clear enough of the line to give the camera a usable view
- Run the camera through the full length of the affected drain
- Record the position and depth of any defect with a locator above ground
- Grade what we find, from minor wear to a defect needing repair
- Provide the footage and a written summary you can pass to an insurer, surveyor or builder
Most properties allow access to the rear through the house or a side passage. Where an extension covers the drain, we survey first so any excavation is limited to the actual fault.
Signs it needs attention now
- A drain that blocks again within weeks of being cleared
- Unexplained damp, subsidence concerns or a sinkhole in the garden
- Buying a property with mature trees close to the drain run
- An insurer or managing agent asking for evidence of the pipe condition
- Planning an extension that will be built over an existing drain
What we see most often in Fulham
- Clay laterals under front gardens affected by root ingress
- Original drain runs built over by side-return extensions
- Rear gullies overwhelmed where the garden has been fully paved
Fulham is overwhelmingly family houses, many recently extended, and much of our work follows building work that changed how the drainage runs. We also carry out pre-purchase surveys, which in this uniform Victorian stock tend to find the same handful of faults.
Equipment and what happens afterwards
We survey with a self-levelling colour camera and an above-ground locator, which together tell us not just what a defect looks like but exactly where it is and how deep. That matters, because a repair quote based on a rough guess at position is a repair quote that changes once the ground is open.
You receive the footage along with a written summary describing each defect, its position and how serious it is. We write it so that a surveyor, an insurer or a builder can use it directly. Where a repair is needed we set out the realistic options, including the ones that do not involve excavation.
What cctv drain surveys cost in Fulham
A CCTV drain survey is a fixed £300 plus VAT, including the footage and a written summary of what we found. You get a fixed price up front rather than an hourly rate, which means a difficult job in Fulham does not become an open-ended one.
Areas we cover around Fulham
Fulham sits within our core coverage, taking in SW6 across Hammersmith and Fulham. Average response is 75 minutes, and we operate in Hammersmith, Chelsea, Putney and Battersea too, which helps when a drain run is shared between properties in different streets.