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Storm drain at the curb of a wet street
Where the lateral meets the city line.

Home service

Aisle 2 · Sewer

Sewer camera inspection for North York homes

Guessing at a buried pipe is expensive. A camera pushed down the line shows what is buried there and its distance from the foundation.

  • We start at the basement clean-out to the city lateral
  • On the van: main-line drum machine
  • You see the broken part before you hear a number
  • Every fixture on the run tested before we leave
Call nowTalk to a plumber(365) 990-1521
  • Licensed and insured (details on the call)
  • Price agreed before work starts
  • North York and next door

Why look before you dig

Most of a house drain is hidden: under the basement slab, out through the foundation and under the front lawn to the city sewer. A camera inspection shows the condition of every foot of it. It turns a vague recurring clog into a clear picture: roots at 32 feet, a belly at 40, a joint offset at the property line.

  • Recurring backups even after cabling
  • Buying an older house and wanting to know what you are getting
  • Planning a basement renovation over the existing drains
  • Sinkhole or soft spot in the front lawn

How the inspection runs

We go in through the main cleanout or a pulled toilet. The camera head sits on a stiff push cable with a distance counter. The plumber feeds it slowly toward the street, stopping at each joint. A small locator on the head lets us find its position and depth from above, so we can mark the lawn exactly where a problem sits.

Stand with us at the monitor if you like. We name what we see as we go: clean pipe, scale, a root intrusion, standing water in a sag, or a break.

Most of a house drain is hidden: under the basement slab, out through the foundation and under the front lawn to the city sewer.

From the counter

What we commonly find in North York

Older laterals here are often vitrified clay with joints every few feet. Tree roots from boulevard maples get in at those joints. Some houses from the late 1940s and 50s have bituminous fibre pipe that flattens with age. Newer infill homes usually have PVC, where problems are more about grading and settled backfill.

Ask for the recording. We hand you the footage. It is useful for a second opinion, an insurance claim or a city inquiry about the portion under the road.

What comes next

  1. Clean line: nothing to do but keep it that way.
  2. Roots only: scheduled clearing or jetting.
  3. A single failed length: dig and repair at the mark.
  4. Failing throughout: full lateral replacement, quoted after we discuss options.

Questions

Can you inspect the city side of the pipe?

The camera can often travel to the city connection. Faults past the property line belong to the City of Toronto; call 311 and share the footage.

Does the line need cleaning first?

Sometimes. Standing water or grease hides the pipe wall, so we may clear it before running the camera.

How the job runs

  1. You callDescribe what is dripping, backing up or cold, and the cross streets.
  2. We ask questionsAge of the building, pipe type if you know it, where the shut-off is.
  3. We open it upTrap off, clean-out open or wall cut: find the actual fault before quoting the fix.
  4. We test itOpen each tap on that run, watch the joints dry and show you what came out.