Everything people ring us to ask before they book, answered in full. If yours is not here, the phone is quicker than a form.
Any time before exchange. We would rather do it early enough that you have room to negotiate, but a survey the week before exchange is still worth far more than no survey at all.
Then you have a graded, located, dated report — which is a negotiating document. Buyers use them to reduce a price or to have work done before completion. That is the point of doing it before you own the problem.
No. Plenty of it is still carrying flow adequately after fifty years. What matters is how far it has deformed and whether the wall has started to break down. Those are both visible on camera, and both are the difference between a quote and a note in the diary.
Sometimes. Reforming and lining can work where the pipe still has enough structural integrity to hold its shape afterwards. Where it has delaminated badly, it usually cannot. We tell you which situation you are in — we are not the ones selling the repair either way.
If it is completely blocked, it has to be cleared before a camera can see anything. If it is draining slowly, survey first — otherwise the jetting removes the evidence of what was causing it.
No. We survey. It is deliberate: a firm that finds the fault and then quotes to fix it has an interest in what it finds, and we would rather not have one.
Because they are frequently wrong. Drainage gets altered during extensions and rarely gets recorded. The pipe is where the pipe is, and tracing it takes an hour.
Usually. If a chamber has been covered by a patio or a drive, the sonde will locate it to within a few centimetres, which turns a search into a single small opening.
Yes. An MSCC5-coded survey with graded defects, distances, depths and video is the standard format, and it is what we produce.
No, and we will not claim it does. It establishes whether a mechanism is present. Attributing the movement is an engineer's job, and they need this report to do it.
A good one will not. Work done properly survives inspection, and plenty of contractors are glad of the record.
Within the first few weeks, while the job is fresh and any guarantee is clearly live.
An MSCC5-coded survey with graded defects, distances, depths and video is the standard format and it is what lenders and solicitors expect to receive. If yours has asked for something unusual, tell us when you ring and we will say honestly whether we can produce it.
Usually, yes — this is the one people always need in a hurry. Say the date when you call and we will tell you straight away whether it is possible rather than booking you in and hoping.
Almost never. The pipe is the thing that failed, not the tree — and lining or repairing the opening usually settles it without touching anything above ground. Anyone who opens with “the tree has to go” is guessing.
If the opening is still there, reliably — often within a year. That is why the report says where the opening is, not just where the roots are.