Something's wrong with your main line. Maybe a toilet that gurgles, a tub that backs up, or a wet patch in the yard that won't dry out. You don't know why, and the last thing you want is somebody guessing and handing you a bill to dig up your whole driveway.
Here's the straight answer: before anyone digs or quotes, you put a camera down the line and look. That's a sewer camera inspection. We snake a small waterproof camera through your sewer and watch the inside of the pipe on a screen, in real time, so we both see the actual problem instead of arguing about what it might be.
A lot of Colton homes sit over old clay sewer lines, and the ground here moves. Clay, sandy loam, and adobe swell when it's wet and shrink in the drought, and that shifting cracks pipe and pulls joints apart. A camera tells you whether you're dealing with a root ball, a crack, or just a clog you can clear for a fraction of the cost.
Why guessing about your sewer line costs you
Your sewer line is buried. You can't see it, so when it backs up the easy move is to assume the worst and start digging. That's how homeowners end up paying to trench a whole yard when the real trouble was a six-inch section of root intrusion they could have spotted in two minutes.
It cuts both ways. Sometimes a line gets cleared, the drain runs fine for a few weeks, and then it backs up again because nobody found the offset joint or the belly in the pipe that keeps catching debris. You pay twice for the same problem, and you still don't know what's down there.
We fix that by putting eyes on it. The camera feeds a video and a footage counter, so we can see exactly what's wrong and exactly how far down the line it sits. Root intrusion at 30 feet, a cracked clay joint near the property line, a bellied section holding water, grease buildup, or a pipe that's collapsed. Once we know, you get a real diagnosis and a real plan, whether that's a simple cleaning, a spot repair, or a trenchless line replacement that leaves your landscaping alone.
When a camera inspection makes sense
- Drains across the house back up at the same time, or a toilet gurgles when you run the washer
- Sewage or slow drainage keeps coming back weeks after a line was cleared
- A patch of lawn stays soggy, smells, or grows greener than everything around it
- You're buying an older Colton home and want to know the shape of the sewer before you sign
- Mature trees sit near the line and you suspect roots in an old clay pipe
- A quake rattled the area and you want to check joints and fittings underground
