Sewer camera inspection: when the video actually pays off

November is the last month the City of Montréal repairs sewer connections under the street, emergencies aside; its crews work from May to November. A property manager who finds a break under the sidewalk today will most likely wait until spring, with a basement exposed to every mid-winter thaw. So the real question is not whether you need a sewer camera inspection. It is why nobody ordered one in September.

This tool review is for the manager weighing a camera quote, and for the technician who has to deliver footage someone can actually use. It does not rank brands. It explains what the tool does, when it earns its fee, and how to keep an hour of video from proving nothing.

What a sewer camera does, and what it doesn’t

Direct answer: a sewer camera inspection means pushing a waterproof, lit camera head on a semi-rigid cable through the building drain and sewer lateral. The operator watches the inside of the pipe live, the distance travelled shows on screen, and a transmitting sonde lets each defect be located from the surface. The deliverable is dated footage and a written report.

In practice the system combines three functions. Image: a self-levelling head keeps the horizon upright, so standing water on the invert can be told apart from buildup on the pipe wall. Chainage: a counter on the reel displays how much cable is out, in feet or metres. Locating: at a manufacturer like RIDGID, SeeSnake cameras carry a 512 Hz sonde that a surface locator picks up to mark the spot on the ground.

What it does not do: clear anything, measure wall thickness, or see through murky water. Like a borescope in the boiler room, it is an observation tool. It proves what it shows, nothing more.

When does a sewer camera inspection pay for itself?

An inspection costs a few hours of technician and equipment time. It pays off in five specific situations:

• The second snaking. A drain cleared once may simply have swallowed something. The same drain cleared twice has a structural, grade or buildup problem. Paying for a third rodding without looking is paying for a callback.
• Before buying or renovating. The sewer lateral of a 1950s or 1960s building is often clay or cast iron, and its condition appears in no sales document.
• Before any excavation. Digging without chainage or a locate means opening too wide, in the wrong place, then paying to restore the parking lot or sidewalk.
• After an unexplained backup. The insurer, the City and the next contractor will all ask the same thing: what is actually in that pipe?
• Downstream of a commercial kitchen. A poorly maintained grease interceptor pushes grease into the building drain. Only a camera shows how far it got.

Conversely, a camera is useless on a line that is still blocked. Restore flow and clean first, or the screen stays black.

What the City of Montréal expects from the footage

The City is clear about who owns what: building owners must keep their sewer connection in good condition up to the municipal sewer under the street, including rodding and root removal on the public side. The City only repairs a structural break under public property, on a connection of 225 mm or less (storm or combined) or 150 mm or less (sanitary), and only if the problem was not caused by prohibited discharges such as oil or grease.

To apply, the footage must:

• give a full view of the sewer up to the public portion;
• show the chainage clearly;
• be shot in a cleaned drain, with roots and obstructions removed;
• demonstrate that misuse did not cause the problem.

It goes with a report signed by an RBQ-licensed, CMMTQ-accredited plumbing company: licence number, date, observations, a sketch of the drain’s position, and the diameters and materials of both the private and public portions. Some boroughs also want the date and address on screen, and accepted file formats vary. The camera work and report are at the owner’s expense. Once the request is accepted, expect roughly two to three weeks before work starts.

Footage shot without these elements often has to be redone. Write them into the quote from the start.

Reading the footage without fooling yourself

Read the video the way you would read a logbook: every observation has a position (the chainage) and a severity. For municipal systems, the North American coding reference is NASSCO’s PACP program, with its LACP module for laterals. A building report does not need that level of formality, but it should keep the spirit: one defect, one position, one screenshot.

The findings that come up most often in Montréal’s building stock:

• Offset or open joint: a visible step between two pipe lengths, usually where roots get in.
• Root intrusion: fine strands or a dense mass at a joint. They grow back after every cut as long as the joint stays open.
• Belly (sag): the camera dips into water that doesn’t drain, then climbs out of it. Debris settles there.
• Crack, break or collapse: a distorted profile or missing pieces of wall. This is the kind of defect that makes a City request eligible on the public side.
• Grease or scale buildup: reduced bore with no structural defect, solved by cleaning rather than digging.

Common misreadings

• Calling it on a black screen. A flooded line shows neither a break nor the absence of one. The City rejects that footage, and a buyer shouldn’t accept it either.
• Mistaking a belly for a blockage. If the camera climbs out of the water further along, the pipe isn’t plugged. It has lost its grade.
• Ignoring the property line. A defect at 20 m has a different payer depending on whether it sits under the parking lot or under the sidewalk. The sketch and the surface locate settle it.
• Watching the video without the chainage. “There are roots somewhere” lets nobody dig or price anything.
• Recommending full replacement for a single joint. A spot repair located by the sonde often costs a fraction of replacing the line end to end.

Anjou: four snakings, one answer

A small 1960s commercial building in Anjou backed up into the basement every spring melt. The file showed four snakings in two years, each time with roots on the cable. The last call came on a Monday morning in March, just as the shops opened, and turned into an emergency repair call.

After clearing and a full cleaning, the camera showed a clay line in good shape up to the front wall. Past the property line, there was an open joint packed with roots and a longitudinal crack along the next length. The sonde placed the defect under the sidewalk, about 1.5 m deep, and the measured diameter was within the City’s limit for a combined connection.

The file sent to the borough held the complete footage with chainage, the report, the sketch and the diameters. The City took on the repair under public property. On the private side, the owner paid only for the camera work, the report and a yearly root cleaning while waiting for the work. Without admissible footage, the owner would have kept paying for snakings, or dug under the sidewalk on their own dime, with a permit. The same file gets built the same way anywhere in Anjou and across Montréal.

Field verdict

A sewer camera is neither a luxury nor a sales gimmick. It is the only way to turn a recurring symptom into a priced decision. It pays from the second snaking on, before any excavation, and whenever a third party (City, insurer, buyer) will need to see proof. It doesn’t pay on an uncleaned line, or without chainage and a report.

Before the ground freezes

Pull up the building’s service records and count the drain calls over the past two years. If the same drain shows up twice, ask for a camera quote that spells out pre-cleaning, footage to the public sewer, visible chainage, a surface locate and a signed report with the RBQ licence number. Keep a copy of the footage in the building file.

This inspection is part of our mechanical plumbing services. Montréal Combustion builds the whole file, from the footage to the sketch, so the City’s or the insurer’s answer is about the break, not about what’s missing from the evidence.