The header information
The first page records the property, the date, the chamber the camera was launched from and the direction of travel. It should also record the pipe material and diameter, most often a hundred millimetre clay or plastic on a domestic run and a hundred and fifty millimetre on a shared or commercial one.
Direction matters more than people expect. Every distance in the report is measured from the launch point in the direction stated, so a defect at nine point two metres means nothing without knowing which chamber the camera started from. If you are handing the report to a builder, that single detail is what lets them dig in the right place.
The observation codes
Surveys in the UK are usually coded to a national standard, which is why the same abbreviations turn up across different contractors. The ones you will see most often are cracks and fractures, open or displaced joints, root ingress, deformation, deposits and infiltration. Each observation carries the distance from the launch and, on a good report, a still image.
We write the plain English meaning next to each code rather than leaving you to look them up, because the purpose of the report is to help you make a decision, not to demonstrate the coding standard.
- Crack or fracture: the pipe wall is broken but the shape is intact.
- Open or displaced joint: two pipe lengths have separated or stepped, leaving a lip.
- Root ingress: roots have entered through an existing defect.
- Deformation: the pipe is out of round, common in plastic under load.
- Deposits: silt, fat or scale reducing the bore.
- Water level: standing water indicating a loss of fall.
How defects are graded
Grades run from minor wear at one end to structural failure at the other. A low grade defect is one the pipe will carry on living with, such as fine surface cracking in an old clay run. A high grade defect is one that is affecting the structure or the flow now, such as a displaced joint holding back waste or a partial collapse.
The grade is not a repair instruction on its own. A moderate defect in an easily accessible run in a garden is a different proposition from the same defect four metres down under a conservatory floor, and a useful report says so.
Standing water and what it tells you
Water sitting in the invert of the pipe when nothing is discharging means that section has lost its fall or has deformed. Ten or fifteen millimetres is unremarkable in older clay. Half the pipe full of standing water over several metres means solids will drop out of suspension there every time, and that is a repeat blockage waiting to happen.
This is one of the most useful findings on any survey and one of the most commonly glossed over, because it does not photograph dramatically. It is often the actual answer to why does this drain keep blocking.
The recommendations and costings
Recommendations should be split into what needs doing now, what should be planned, and what only needs recording and re-checking later. Each item should have a price against it, and the price should say which method it assumes, because patch lining a single joint and excavating a metre of pipe under a driveway are wildly different numbers.
If a report gives you defects but no costed options, it is only half finished. The whole point of measuring the fault is so that the repair can be quoted without further exploratory work.
What to do with the report afterwards
Keep the footage as well as the document. If you sell the property, a survey with footage from a dated inspection is genuine evidence for a buyer and often prevents a price reduction being argued from a vague concern. If you are claiming on insurance, the footage is usually what the loss adjuster asks for first.
The report belongs to you. Any competent contractor can price from it, and you are under no obligation to use the firm that produced it, although in our case the same engineers carry out the repair, so nothing is lost translating one team's findings to another.
Questions we get asked
How long should a report take to arrive?
One to two working days is normal, and faster where a property purchase deadline depends on it.
Do I get the raw footage?
Yes. You should receive the full recorded inspection as well as still images of each defect.
Is a survey valid for insurance?
A coded survey with footage, distances and depths is what insurers and loss adjusters normally expect to see.
What if the camera cannot get all the way along?
The report records where and why it stopped, which is itself a finding, and a collapse or heavy root mass is often the reason.