Sewer Camera Inspection and Drain Cleaning in New York City
A camera answers the question everyone actually has, which is whether this is a clog or a collapsed line under the sidewalk. Those two things cost very different amounts of money. We put a camera down the cleanout and look, and you watch the same screen we do.
- Sewer Camera Inspection
- HD Color Video Inspection
- Main Line and Drain Cleaning
- Cable Rodding
- High-Pressure Water Jetting
- Root Cutting
- Maintenance Plans
- All Five Boroughs
What the camera actually shows
Root intrusion at the joints — almost always the old clay tile, and almost always where two lengths meet.
Cracks, offset joints, and bellies where the line has settled and standing water never clears.
Grease and scale narrowing a pipe that looks fine from the cleanout.
The house trap, which in a lot of Brooklyn housing stock is the actual problem and has been since somebody paved over it.
And where it all is. The locator gives us the position and the depth, which is the difference between opening six feet of sidewalk and opening thirty.
Cleaning, and when cleaning is not enough
Cleaning clears the blockage. It does not repair the pipe.
If roots came in through a cracked joint, cutting them buys you a season, maybe two, and then they come back through the same crack. We will tell you which one you have and what each costs, because the alternative is you paying us twice for the same afternoon.
Cable rodding, and what we rod
Kitchen sinks, bathtubs, toilets, floor drains, storm lines and main sewers. Same idea in every case — a cable, a cutting head, and somebody who has done it enough to feel the difference between grease and a root.
Grease cools and lines the pipe like plaque, narrowing it a little every year. Roots find the one cracked joint and grow into the only water on the block. And occasionally there is a thing that was flushed and should not have been, which we pull out and do not comment on.
High-pressure water jetting
A cable cuts a hole through the blockage. A jetter takes the pipe back to its walls.
Rodding punches an opening and the flow returns, which feels like a fix — but the grease ring, the scale and the root hair at the joint are all still there, and the pipe closes again from the diameter it started at. Jetting is water at pressure through a nozzle that pulls itself up the line and cuts backward against the walls.
It is the right call on restaurant grease lines, on mineral scale, on storm drains and catch basins packed with sand after a season of runoff — and on any drain you have had rodded twice in the same year.
When jetting is the wrong call
Jetting a pipe that has already failed can finish it.
Old clay tile with cracked joints, a line offset at the bell, a section already collapsed — pressure in that pipe makes the problem larger and the repair more expensive. That is why we camera anything we have not seen before the jetter comes off the truck.
Somebody willing to jet your sewer without looking at it first is gambling with your line, not theirs.
Rodding, jetting, or repair — the honest ladder
Rodding restores flow. It is fast, it is the cheapest thing on this page, and for a one-off blockage it is the correct answer.
Jetting cleans the pipe rather than opening a channel through what is in it. That is the answer when the same line keeps closing.
Repair is the answer when the pipe itself has failed, and no amount of cleaning changes that. We tell you which rung you are on before we start, not after.
Maintenance plans, and who actually needs one
Restaurants with grease lines. Multi-family buildings and managing agents with a portfolio and no interest in the 11pm call. Schools and institutions where the sewer closing means the doors close too.
A plan sets the schedule to the line rather than the calendar, adds a camera pass once a year so the trend is documented rather than remembered, and leaves a written condition report each visit — which is the thing a managing agent actually needs when the board asks why the budget line exists.
A single-family house with no history of backups does not need one, and we will say so rather than sell you one.
Buying a house
Camera the line before you close. The sewer lateral running under the sidewalk belongs to the property, and it becomes yours at the closing table along with everything wrong with it.
It is the cheapest inspection in the transaction and the one most often skipped.
What it costs
We tell you before the camera goes in, not after. A sewer camera inspection is a known quantity and we will quote it on the phone.
What we will not quote on the phone is the repair, because nobody can price a break they have not seen, and a phone estimate is a guess you end up paying for.
Where we work
All five boroughs — Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Get the line looked at
Recurring backups, slow drains across several fixtures, gurgling toilets, or a wet patch in the yard that never dries. Any one of those is worth a camera before it is worth an excavator.
Call (718) 965-3500 or book a camera inspection. A person answers.
