For many homeowners, plumbing complaints are the least enjoyable a part of home maintenance. They seriously degrade a home's livability, they require expensive repairs, and they also can quickly get worse if they're not corrected promptly. If you know you've got a serious problem a single of your drainage lines, you are able to cut right to one's heart of the matter simply by using a video inspection intend to locate blockages and damage. Here's how the procedure works.- Reliant Plumbing
Advantages Of A Camera Inspection
Before the advance of compact video equipment ideal for use inside residential plumbing lines, locating a blockage or a broken pipe was often a time-consuming process requiring a great deal of trial and error. Major breaks would sometimes make themselves known with profuse (and costly!) leaks, but blockages could possibly be much harder to detect. Homeowners would be obliged to dig extremely long sewer trenches, and even multiple trenches, to examine suspect lines directly.
Having a video inspection unit, a plumber can locate line damage and blockages very precisely. This precision translates straight into a repair job that's faster, more efficient, and cheaper. You'll want to take advantage of a relevant video inspection service should your pipes are difficult gain access to. Locating blockages in a drain or sewer line beneath your foundation slab is a perfect example -- you don't want to need to break your slab open more than once!
Professional-Grade Equipment
Thanks to the rapid pace of technological development, homeowners have access to some of the same powerful little inspection tools that professional plumbers. You must recognize the limitations of cheap equipment, though. Consumer-level plumbing inspection kits seldom offer over few dozen feet of exploration, and their cameras lack many of the features that make professional gear so effective.
When you turn the inspection job to a professional, the technician who will your inspection make use of a camera set-up capable of snaking through even the longest drain lines. Best rigs have a reach greater than 300 feet. Powerful lighting and self-righting capabilities dramatically help the picture quality a professional tech gets, too. Most importantly, professional cameras have a transmitter to help locate blockages (see below). Proper plumbing camera rigs are more expensive than $15,000.
What sort of Inspection Process Works
As soon as you call in a video inspection service, the inspection starts right in the affected fixture at home. The plumbing lines supplying it are opened so that the camera rig might be inserted through the trap. The inspection head will slowly be pushed later on, going as far as your home's main sewer line and its connection to the municipal sewer if required. Good inspectors will endeavour to visualize as much of the device as possible; the camera is often pushed through soft blockages to consider further damage.
Once pipe damage or even a blockage is spotted about the camera's display, the operator will locate it precisely while using the built-in transmitter. The camera will be stopped with the proper point and also the technician will use a locator wand to post its signal. The location is marked with spray paint so that you know precisely where to dig.
Drawbacks Of Employing a Video Camera Inspection
When you probably already know, the primary drawback of a video inspection is your buck. Full system inspections could cost $300 or even more. Even the most modestly-priced services cost about $100. You need to to be wary of firms that advertise extremely cheap video inspection; their helps may only be available to customers who commit to hiring the company to fix any damage it finds.
One other disadvantage of a video inspection is always that you're responsible for the expenses regardless of the results. When the technician fails to locate your plumbing problem, you're returning to square one. The only option is usually the kind of exploratory digging you had been hoping to avoid. Fortunately, if you hire a company that has good equipment and well-trained technicians, chances of failure are extremely low.
Video plumbing inspection is pricey but it takes a great deal of the uncertainty away from fixing major plumbing issues. If you are facing a plumbing symptom in your own home, your first step ought to always be to assess the extent of the problem as fully as you possibly can on your own. If it seems going to stem from major damage that is going to require excavation, calling in a relevant video inspection service is probably advisable. - Reliant Plumbing