What actually happens when your sewer gets scoped?

Before the camera goes in

The technician asks what you have noticed — which fixtures, how often, whether rain matters — and finds the access. The best entry is an outside cleanout; the next best is a floor cleanout in the basement; failing both, a toilet is lifted or the camera goes down a roof vent. In a lot of older Seattle houses there is no outside cleanout, which is fine for the inspection and worth fixing later.

The run

1. Entry. The camera head — a sealed lens with LED lights, self-levelling so the picture stays upright — is pushed in on a stiff cable from a reel with a footage counter.
2. Toward the house. If entering from a yard cleanout, the operator often runs upstream first to check the building drain under the slab: cast iron condition, the kitchen and laundry connections, the base of the stack.
3. Toward the street. Then downstream, slowly. The operator is looking at the pipe wall, the joints, the water level, and the transitions between materials. Every notable thing gets a pause and a note against the footage counter: roots at 18 feet, offset at 27, standing water 31 to 39, material change to clay at 12.
4. Locating. At each point of interest, and at the property line and the connection, a second person (or the same one, stepping outside) uses a handheld locator to find the sonde in the camera head and marks position and depth on the surface. Paint dots with numbers.
5. The main. The run ends where the side sewer meets the city main or a shared line. The operator notes what the connection looks like, whether it is intact, and whether the main is flowing.

A straightforward line takes twenty minutes of camera time; a long, difficult or blocked one can take an hour or more. The whole visit, including the conversation, is usually about an hour.

What the operator is actually looking for

What you should get at the end

• The video file — the whole run, not clips.
• The trace on the ground, and ideally a sketch with distances and depths.
• A summary in plain language: material by section, each defect with its distance and severity, and what the connection looks like.
• A recommendation, with the reasoning tied to specific footage — or a candid "this line is fine".

The report guide explains the vocabulary. If the visit ends with a price and no video, you have been sold something, not shown something.

When to have one done

Before buying a house built before 1980; before selling one; after any backup; before paving, building or planting over the line; when the house is more than fifty years old and nobody has ever looked; and any time a contractor proposes work without showing footage. Our inspection page covers what we include and what it costs to find out.