Camera Inspection
A camera down the line before anyone quotes a repair, so you are looking at the pipe and not an opinion.
The job behind the photograph.
Roots do not break into a sound pipe. They follow water vapour to a hairline crack or a joint that has already opened, put a fine root through the gap, and then thicken inside the line where there is water and no competition. By the time a drain backs up, what is in there is a mat the diameter of the pipe, anchored through a wall it did not make.
Clearing it is a cutting head sized to the pipe, run through until the bore is open end to end, and the debris flushed out rather than left to reassemble downstream. On a heavy one it takes more than one pass and a bigger head each time. That part is the easy part, and any drain company can do it.
The part that decides whether you are back next winter is the camera afterwards. It shows the joint or the crack the roots came in at, how far along the run it sits, and whether the surrounding pipe is sound enough to leave. Sometimes the answer is a maintenance interval and an honest conversation about the tree. Sometimes it is a spot repair on one length. And sometimes the line is old clay that has been letting roots in at every joint for decades, and the honest answer is that cutting it again is money spent on a delay.
Cut back
To the full bore
A cutting head sized to the pipe, run until the line is open end to end.
Then found
The joint they came in at
Camera after the cut. Roots return to the same opening, not a new one.
The options
Spot repair, or a schedule
Told straight, with the footage on screen, including when cutting again is just a delay.
The tree
Stays your call
We say what is feeding the line. Nobody here is going to tell you to lose a mature tree.
Book a visit
Get somebody out to the line.
Which fixtures are affected and roughly how long it has been going on is enough to start with. If it is backing up right now, the phone is faster than the form, and it is answered at any hour.
