Sewer Camera Inspection in Greeley, CO

A self-levelling camera head on a flexible push rod, lit and transmitting to a monitor, traveling the inside of your line. You see the pipe material, the condition of the wall, every joint, and anything in the way: root masses, grease, scale, standing water, cracks, offsets where sections have shifted, and bellies where the pipe sags. A footage counter tells you how far along each finding sits, and a locator can mark the position on the ground above. You watch it live, and you should get a copy.

In Greeley’s older neighborhoods, it’s one of the highest-value inspections available and standard home inspections generally don’t include it. A sewer lateral replacement is a five-figure conversation, it’s the buyer’s problem the day after closing, and nothing about it is visible from inside the house. Fifty-year-old clay under three mature trees is not a defect you want to discover in your first spring. Ask for it specifically, before the inspection deadline.

Usually under an hour for a residential lateral once access is established. Longer if the line has to be cleared first: a camera can’t see through standing water or a solid blockage, so a heavily blocked line sometimes needs cabling before it can be surveyed. If there’s no accessible cleanout, add time for pulling a toilet or accessing through a roof vent, which is worth knowing before the appointment.

It makes the job straightforward, so it’s the first thing a plumber looks for: typically a capped four-inch pipe in the basement floor or wall near where the line leaves the house, sometimes outside near the foundation. Without one, access means pulling a toilet or going in through a roof vent, both of which are doable but slower. If your house has no accessible cleanout, having one installed is worth considering on its own merits: it makes every future inspection, cabling and jetting job faster and cheaper.

Two of the most consequential things a camera finds, and neither is visible any other way. An offset is a joint where the two pipe sections no longer line up, leaving a lip that catches solids and an opening that admits roots and groundwater: usually caused by ground movement, which the expansive clay soil around here supplies reliably. A belly is a section that has sagged below grade, so water and solids stand in it instead of flowing through. Bellies don’t clear themselves and cabling doesn’t fix them; they need the pipe re-laid to proper fall.

Yes, and this is where it pays for itself. The camera head carries a sonde, a transmitter, and a locator above ground picks up its signal to mark position and depth. So instead of trenching along a guessed route, the excavation is a targeted hole over a known defect at a known depth. On a driveway, a mature lawn or under a patio, the difference between “dig here” and “dig until we find it” is substantial in both cost and disruption.

Four, mostly, and each has a different future. Clay tile in pre-1960s houses: the barrel often survives well but every joint is a root entry point. Cast iron from roughly the same era through the 1970s: strong but corrodes from the inside, thinning the wall and building scale. Orangeburg: bituminised fiber, used in some mid-century construction: it deforms into an oval and delaminates, and it is at end of life wherever it still exists. PVC and ABS in modern builds: generally excellent, with problems at joints, from crushing, or from bad initial fall.

Once, for peace of mind and a baseline, if your house is pre-1970 or you have mature trees near the line. Not annually with no symptoms, that’s a service being sold rather than needed. The times it genuinely earns its place are: before buying, after any backup, before spending money on jetting or repair, before finishing a basement, and if you’ve just inherited a house whose plumbing history is unknown. A single survey with footage gives you a reference point for every decision afterwards.

You should, and it’s reasonable to ask up front. Recorded video with footage markers is your evidence: for deciding between repair options, for getting a comparable second quote, for a real estate negotiation, and for showing an insurer or a future buyer. A plumber confident in the diagnosis has no reason to withhold it. If someone recommends significant excavation but won’t hand over footage of the defect, that on its own is a reason to get another opinion.

Practically speaking, no. It’s a flexible rod pushed through the line at low force, and a competent operator can feel resistance and stops rather than forcing it. The one real limitation is that a camera cannot pass a solid blockage or a badly collapsed section: in which case the survey stops there, and where it stopped is itself the most useful piece of information you got. Occasionally a fully collapsed line needs excavating at the stopping point, and that footage is what tells the crew where.