We survey across DY7, DY8 and DY9 – Stourbridge, Wollaston, Oldswinford, Pedmore, Norton, Lye, Amblecote, Wordsley, Kinver and Hagley.

A CCTV drain survey puts a camera through your drainage and produces a record of what is actually there: every run, every junction, every defect, positioned to the centimetre and coded to the industry standard.

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What you get

Long runs and mature gardens mean a Stourbridge survey often covers more ground than people expect. Every section is graded, every defect coded to MSCC and positioned in metres, with a site plan and the full video. The report comes back the same day, by NADC-certified surveyors.

What a CCTV drain survey covers

Why people here ask for a survey

Buying the property. A standard structural survey does not go underground. This one does, and the report is written so it can go straight to a solicitor or be used to renegotiate.

Building over or near a drain. Extensions, conservatories and garden rooms frequently sit over a shared lateral or a public sewer. Severn Trent will want the position, depth and condition of the pipe before agreeing a build-over.

All the reasons a CCTV survey gets commissioned

Why drains fail in Stourbridge

Most recurring problems here trace back to ground conditions rather than to anything that was put down the drain. This is why.

Settlement over old workings. Fireclay and the coal above it were worked across Lye, Wollescote and Amblecote. Ground that has settled over those workings pulls pipe joints apart, and displaced joints are among the commonest structural defects we log here.

Two very different housing markets. The Victorian terraces of Lye and the Old Quarter are short-length vitrified clay with a joint every metre or so. Pedmore, Norton, Oldswinford and Hagley are interwar and later, on larger plots with longer runs, mature trees and – increasingly – extensions built over drainage that nobody surveyed first. That second group is where a pre-purchase survey most often pays for itself, because the sums involved are larger and the drainage is further from the house.

Sandstone to the west. Around Wollaston and out towards Kinver the ground is Triassic sandstone, which drains freely. That is good for soakaways and bad for defective joints: fine material migrates out over years and leaves a void for the pipe to drop into.

That is the reason a repeat blockage here is worth looking at properly rather than clearing again – the cause is usually structural and it is usually visible.

Who owns the drain

Since the 2011 private sewer transfer, Severn Trent owns shared drainage and everything beyond your boundary. On the terraced streets a single run often serves several properties, so establishing where the boundary falls can decide who pays for what.

South Staffs Water supplies the water here but is not the sewerage undertaker.

Commercial and landlord work around Stourbridge

Stourbridge covers a fair spread of housing, from Amblecote, Cradley, Hagley, and this applies to most of it.

Drain rods laid out on wet paving beside a lifted cast-iron manhole cover, with a jetting hose coiled alongside

The report matters more on commercial work than domestic, because somebody else usually has to be satisfied by it – a landlord, a managing agent, an insurer or an incoming tenant.

Every section graded, every defect coded to MSCC and positioned in metres, a plan of the system and the full recording. That is a document you can hand over rather than a verbal account of what somebody saw.

Planned rather than reactive is the cheaper pattern on a Stourbridge commercial site: a survey before a lease event, a jetting visit before the season that always causes trouble, rather than an emergency at the worst moment.

New build and warranty issues in Stourbridge

In Stourbridge – DY7, DY8 and DY9 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Amblecote and Cradley.

Newer housing is not automatically well drained. Drainage goes in early in a build, gets driven over by everything that follows, and settles for years afterwards.

The common findings on recent estates are debris left in the run from construction, sections laid without consistent fall, and connections made after the original work that were never recorded.

Warranty periods are finite. A survey inside that window is worth considerably more than one outside it, because it turns “something is wrong” into a documented, coded, positioned defect that somebody else has to answer for.

Getting to you

In Stourbridge – DY7, DY8 and DY9 – this is one of the questions we are asked most, and the answer is usually the same across Amblecote and Cradley.

We work out of Castlecroft in Wolverhampton, and Stourbridge is close enough that the constraint on timing is the diary rather than the drive.

Ring and we will give you a straight answer on when, and a price before we set off.

Access and site constraints in Stourbridge

Amblecote and Cradley are a fair sample of Stourbridge drainage, and what follows is what we find across DY7, DY8 and DY9.

Not every job is a clear driveway and an open chamber, and it is worth saying what we need before we arrive.

Rear access. Terraced streets often have shared entries and no vehicle access to the back. Our equipment comes off the van on foot where it has to, but it changes how long the job takes.

Finding the chamber. Covers get tarmacked over, decked over and turfed over. If you know where yours is, tell us on the phone; if you do not, we will find it, but again it is time.

Parking. On the tighter Stourbridge streets, somewhere to put the van within hose reach is the practical constraint.

Standing water. The camera cannot see through it, so a blocked run is cleared before it is surveyed.

Tree roots and Stourbridge drainage

Amblecote and Cradley are a fair sample of Stourbridge drainage, and what follows is what we find across DY7, DY8 and DY9.

Roots do not break into a sound pipe. The guide printed in the back of our own survey reports puts it plainly: roots normally infiltrate via bad joints, cracks, fractures and breaks. The defect comes first and the root exploits it.

What a root is looking for is water, and a drain leaking at a joint into dry summer soil is an obvious source. A hair root finds the gap, and once inside – in a constant supply of exactly what it wants – it thickens. The root that got in through a two millimetre gap becomes a twenty millimetre root and levers the joint further apart.

Inside the pipe it behaves like a net. Water passes through it. Paper, fat and solids do not. From the house everything seems fine until the day it is not.

Common questions

The drainage runs under a neighbour’s garden — can you still survey it? Usually yes. We survey from the manholes, and the camera does not care whose lawn it is passing under.