Sewer Inspection – Edmonton

Pleasantview home inspections’ mission is to add value to your potential purchase or sale of the home and get you all the facts as best we can. Our expensive reports cover all visible aspects of your property. These reports will address the good and identify serious issues, this will allow you to understand if the asking price is fair and help you navigate any negotiations regarding the price.

Although our general home inspections cover a lot, some aspects are not covered and are an additional add-on if the buyer would want a more extensive inspection. One add-on we would highly recommend is a sewer inspection. Many clients ask us if we need a sewer scope before we buy a house or a property and what does a sewer scope do? Basically, it’s a camera with a long cord you run down the sewer line from the house out to the city connection to see what’s going on, and gives you a good picture of the sewer lines. The general consensus out there is that if your house is less than 20 years old then yeah you don’t need one, but let’s go through some things and you will understand if you should have one or not. We will talk about a few different scenarios that a sewer scope can be done and why it is a good idea in each scenario.

Pleasantview Inspections
Edmonton Sewer Inspection Services
780-695-5595
Looking for a free estimate? or to contact us? —> click here

Has the property you’re buying had any remodelling done to it?

If so then I would suggest you probably need a sewer scope because sometimes the lines get cut they get damaged they get left open things get dropped down inside, below is a picture of a remodelling project that the home that was taken away and the line got cut and this line is full of rocks.

New Construction

We do recommend sewer scoping a brand new built home because the lines can get crushed the lines can get cracked can get broken or they can be left open and things can fall inside of them, as you can see below. There’s a piece of drywall in there it’s not a very big one but the possibility of something being down there when it shouldn’t be can potentially cause problems.

Has the property had any history of backups or slow drainage issues?

We are not talking about slow drainage like the one from your bathroom sink, I mean the whole house everything takes forever to drain no matter what drain you go to it’s always prolonged or has actually backed up and has never been taken care of, if that’s the issue yeah you need to put a scope down there and see why is this happening, you want to know what you’re getting into before you sign on the dotted line because sewer issues can be very expensive and do you want to buy this house plus another 10,000 – 15,000 of sewer repairs.

The lines between the house and the city connections:

We want to see where that drain line goes between the house and the city connection are there any big trees in the way or off to the side or next to the sewer line? If there are, I would suggest having a sewer scope done because you want to see our roots going inside there, like the home below. You don’t want to see that in your sewer pipe that’s not a good thing that means you have some repairs to do and depending on where those repairs are and how extensive they are your price just keeps going up.

When we do our home inspections we observe and inspect the inside and outside of the home, and when we are looking at the exterior of the home we include your lawn and how the water is draining when we observe the lawn if there is a beautiful lush green spot on the yard, that’s always green it’s always maybe a little soft and wet and squishy, well if its where your sewer line goes out then you may have a leak there and you need to do something about it, and when you’ve run the line down the sewer and see there’s a leak and it has broken and now you know where it is and you can get an estimate on what that may cost to fix it. Sometimes lines can get damaged by heavy equipment and this causes a bend in the line, a small bend can be manageable but if there is a very big bend, the line can get stuck and cause a backup, and even flushing the toilet is going to be a problem.

How old is the home?

It’s good to know how old the home is and if it’s over twenty years old what year it was built. Older homes were built with different drain pipes and you need to know what material was used and what the lifespan is and if it has already corroded and how well it can work before it needs replacing. The photo below shows a cast iron pipe and you can see it’s totally rotten and it needs to be replaced. A few different types of pipe materials are cement, transite, stainless steel, copper, Orangeburg, etc. It is always a good idea to know what material the pipes are made of so you have an idea of the condition of the pipes and when they might need replacing before you buy the home.

The older the home the more chances it has debris that has built up in the pipes, the first picture below is a home that is about 14 years old and we have circled the grease that has started to build up. The second picture is around 20 years old but there’s a little bit more grease built up in it. As you can see things start backing up it’s possible it’s going to take a long time, but you still need to know what’s going on down there so you can plan your future.

Here are some photos of the different types of pipes and what they should look:

PVC – White Plastic pipes are flexible and soundproof

ABS, or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene pipes are stronger and more shock resistant

SDR 35 pipes are resistant to many chemicals and environments

Pleasantview Inspections
Edmonton Sewer Inspection Services
780-695-5595
Looking for a free estimate? or to contact us? —> click here