Sewer camera inspection in Indianapolis

What we do

A self-leveling color camera on a push reel goes in through the cleanout — or through a pulled toilet or the basement stack if the house doesn't have one — and runs the full lateral to the Citizens main. The footage is recorded with an on-screen distance counter. When we hit a defect we stop, note the footage, and walk the lawn with a locator that picks up the sonde in the camera head, marking the spot and the depth with paint or a flag. You watch it live on the monitor, and the file comes to you afterward.

Sewer camera inspection Indianapolis-wide is the same price whether we find nothing or find a collapse: $250–$500 depending on access and whether a toilet has to come off. It is credited in full against any repair we do.

What the camera shows on an Indianapolis lateral

• Clay joints every two or three feet, and whether they are tight, open, or offset with one section dropped below the next
• Roots — fine hairs at a joint that mean an open seal, or a mass that means the joint is broken
• Orangeburg — recognizable by the egg-shaped cross section and the blistered, fibrous wall
• Cast iron scale — the rough, tuberculated interior of an old iron section, and whether the bottom is still there
• Bellies — the camera goes underwater and stays there for a stretch
• Cracks and holes — soil visible through the pipe wall, or a gap where a section is missing
• The tap — whether the connection to the main was made with a proper wye or, as in a lot of 1950s work, by hammering a hole in the main

Every one of those maps to a different fix, which is why a camera run comes before every quote. The post on what a sewer camera inspection shows has stills from typical findings.

When to get one

Before buying a house built before 1975. A home inspector runs water and watches it drain; they do not scope the lateral. A $350 camera run before closing is the cheapest sewer insurance you can buy in Marion County, and it has knocked $10,000 off more than one asking price.

After the second clog. One main sewer line clog Indianapolis plumbers snake through is bad luck. Two in a year is a pipe defect, and snaking it a third time treats the symptom.

When something is wet outside. A green stripe, a sinkhole, a wet patch that doesn't dry. The camera plus the locator tells you whether the leak is under it.

After a repair or lining. Ours or anyone else's. A post-job scope is how you know the work was done.

What the camera can't do

It can't see through a full blockage; if the line is packed with roots we jet first and scope second. It can't measure slope precisely — it shows standing water, which is the practical version. And it can't tell you the age of the pipe beyond the material. Pair it with the house's build date and the neighborhood and you can usually guess within a decade anyway.

Cleanouts

A lot of pre-1960 Indianapolis houses have no exterior cleanout, which is why the camera sometimes goes in through a toilet flange. If we end up doing any work on the line, we add a two-way cleanout at the house end. It costs a few hundred dollars in an open trench and makes every future inspection and jetting cheaper and cleaner.

After the inspection

You get the video, a written summary of the findings with the footages and depths, and a price for whatever the findings call for — jetting, a spot repair, lining or replacement. If the pipe is fine, the summary says so and you have a baseline for the next time something gurgles.