The Inspectors Journey: A Dive into the Sewer with a Camera

As I sat on my stool, carefully positioning the camera at the entrance to the sewer, I couldn't help but feel a mix of excitement and trepidation. The non-crowd, which I would later come to realize was essential for this inspection, was already beginning to reveal its secrets. The squashing down or out-of-shape areas, where water tends to accumulate, were just one of the many features that I was eager to explore.

The camera's ability to illuminate even the darkest corners of the sewer was a marvel in itself. With full lighting on, I could see every detail, from the intricate network of roots and debris to the smooth, unblemished walls of the pipe. The low spots in the pipe, where water had accumulated, were also becoming apparent, forming small pools that seemed to be holding their own tiny worlds.

As I began my journey down the sewer, I was struck by the sheer variety of textures and colors that surrounded me. From the rough, rocky surfaces to the smooth, gray concrete, every inch of the pipe seemed to have its own unique character. The water, too, played a crucial role in my exploration, as it revealed hidden features like low spots and pools that would have been invisible without its gentle flow.

Despite the challenges, such as navigating around roots and avoiding areas where the camera might get stuck, I was making good progress. With each new section of pipe, I was uncovering more of the sewer's secrets, from the way it flowed and bubbled to the various obstacles that lay in its path. The use of a downpipe made the process smoother, allowing me to feed the camera back into itself as we wound our way deeper into the sewer.

I took care to clean the cable as I went, using disinfectant wipes to ensure that any debris or bacteria wouldn't interfere with my inspection. It was also essential to mark key features, like the spot where a particularly stubborn root had caused problems, so that I could share this information with others who might be facing similar challenges.

The measurement of distances proved to be another challenge, as it seemed impossible to get an accurate reading in the confined spaces of the sewer. However, I was determined to make do, and my attempts at measuring were marked by a sense of discovery and wonder. Whether it was estimating the length of a section of pipe or determining where specific features like roots lay hidden, each measurement became a vital piece of information that would help me navigate this underground world.

As we continued on our journey, I found myself pondering the broader implications of my work. Sewer inspection cameras were so versatile – could they be used for other tasks, like inspecting water pipes or even searching for lost items? The possibilities seemed endless, and I couldn't wait to explore more of what this tool had to offer.

Once we reached a certain distance, around 40 feet, I decided it was time to call in the professionals. With my camera now set at its maximum depth, I began to appreciate just how far-reaching its capabilities truly were. The area where roots had caused problems would require specialized attention, and I made a mental note of that particular challenge for future reference.

As we began our ascent back into the light, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction with the work we'd done. Despite the obstacles and challenges that arose during the inspection, we'd uncovered more than just a few hidden features – we'd gained a deeper understanding of this vital infrastructure and its importance to our daily lives.

For those who might be interested in learning more about sewer inspection cameras or other inspection tools, I left links in the description below. And if you liked this video, please subscribe and hit that thumbs up button to help us continue creating high-quality content for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Shannon from houseimprovements.com and today's video I'm going to demonstrate this uh inspection camera this camera was sent out to us by a company and uh you know it was a gift we always tell people you can send out whatever you want I'm going to try it for a while if I like it you might get a video you might get an article in the Forum whatever and that's the case here so they sent out this camera can be used to inspect sewers conduit ductwork pretty well anywhere that you can stick a camera with a cable on you should be able to use this wet or dry I've been playing around with it a little bit and I can definitely see some benefits to my own renovation business and as well to even uh even folks who are flipping houses you know you could pay for this pretty quickly you know in today's age of everybody wants inspections on their sewers and that sort of thing this this camera in Canada here retails I've seen as high as 700 when you think about a two to four hundred dollar cost to have somebody come in and do an inspection for you and give you that recording uh you know a couple flips and you got this thing paid for and there's going to be a million other things I think that you'll find that you'd use it for so anyways I just want to run through some of the basic features of this this unit it's all all one unit which is nice I really like that so everything comes as you see um it's pretty compact like really it's got a good hard case so you can throw this in the backseat of the truck and not worry about it getting damaged really some are a little more you know the screen isn't protected that sort of thing so they're not quite as as uh robust I guess so anyways they did send us this out um they're not paying us to do a review I'm going to give you my likes and dislikes about it here in a few minutes but first let's just have a look at the unit itself so as you've seen it's in the stand it'll stand up on its own it's well well weighted well balanced but when you're using it it's going to be used in this type of position okay so they've got a clip here that basically keeps the spool from turning when you when you're not wanting it to turn okay your camera is in here right in here let's build just got to get it out of there that's the one thing I found a little clumsy with it once you've got it out and started it's good to go so you've got a color camera LED lighting I've put this protector on it which this unit comes with so when I'm pushing it through places it just keeps it up off the surface a little bit and protects the edge of the camera it's all stainless steel it's kind of got a Spring end in it so you can get around corners and stuff a little easier inside the box here is all your your controls and your viewing so there's a few different things this is like a sun shade that you could put up here if you're using it outside I haven't used it outside yet but it comes with that so you can help you see the screen there's some instructions there's a bag of goodies here this you could you could actually remove this protector that I put on and put this one on with the wheels so if you're going inside I don't know what that is about a three inch diameter pipe or bigger this would just keep it up off the bottom a little bit I haven't actually used those at all I've just put this protector on it seems to be fine uh comes with another little kit with there's some caps in there and at first I thought they were they were caps for the to protect the lens but there's not a big enough cap that covers that lens so not real sure maybe when you take this all unscrew it maybe they're caps for the end of the air I'm not too sure a little screwdriver for mounting these accessories but it basically comes with all that there's a charging cord there and then inside oops actually I can lift it out I don't know why I'm lifting the whole thing inside here is the basically the main controls and the battery so there's a charging port an on off switch there's a dial here to adjust the brightness of the LEDs all your cable connections for video and and everything are right there so there is a display here when you turn it on tells you that you've got power gives you a battery indicator they say that a lot I haven't used it this long but they say it'll last about eight hours which is pretty darn good really so um I'd have to believe them I haven't ran it that long continuously okay so that all fits in there and I'll just turn that on and I don't wanna cameraman doesn't want to be on TV so I'll make sure the camera isn't facing him so I've turned on the unit here I'm going to power up the screen it's a nine inch LEL uh LCD screen not LED it's an LCD screen so pretty decent quality but you can see it's got a pretty good quality camera especially at a close-up distance you know that pegboard over there is six feet away from the camera and it's it picks everything up quite nicely um now the nice thing about this it comes with a memory card so there's a card right here I forget the size of the card but anyways there's a card there so you can record and take photos as well of whatever you're looking at so that's good if you're if you're actually in the business of doing sewer inspections you can you can record whatever you're doing and give the homeowner a copy so that's really nice there's another menu here for adjusting your contrast and the time and all that kind of stuff so I don't think I need to go through that at all that all is uh really good quality down here in the corner it's a little light you might not pick up on it but it's actually got the date and the time and everything right there so that's really good if you are you know in the business and and need to record this for somebody so basically what you're doing is whatever you're inspecting you're just feeding this camera down that tube or the pipe or the hose or duct or whatever you're going into and as well on the on the cable some units will actually show the distance that you've gone on the screen this one doesn't but they do have the they do have and it's really hard to see but there is markings on the cable this one's in meters uh 40 inches in a meter basically what I found is those are hard to find when you're actually you know you got it down the drain or whatever you're scoping and you're also and you're trying to see where this Mark is so what I did for a lot of this one is I put some extra marks all the way around the line here so I can quickly identify that okay this is where I need to look for the for the distance marked on the cable so that's just something I did I don't know how long that's going to last with cleaning and handling and everything but that's what I did to to make it easier to find the to find the uh the distance thing so I'm just going to turn this off feed this all back in there feeds a little easier when I'm standing the right way but um so charger yeah I think I covered all the basics of what's included with this unit now my likes and dislikes like us like I said all these companies you want to send me out whatever I'll have a look at it and if it makes a video or an article I'm giving my honest opinion and I'm only giving that opinion after I've used it so so these are my likes and my and my dislikes my likes I like the screen it's really good quality good size screen to be able to view whatever you're looking at I like that it has the ability to record and take pictures that's that's awesome uh it's fairly compact you know overall the unit you know considering this is a hundred and uh 50 feet uh what is that like 40 some meters 45 meters I just forget um so it's it's good length of coil and it's still fairly compact so I like that it's light I don't know what the weight is but it basically weighs nothing uh camera quality is really good so that's all good oh yeah here's my other point it's 45 meters 150 feet so has a good length of cable and they they do have other models with longer and shorter cables my dislikes right underneath here let me just close this up right underneath here this little piece of cable that comes out of the frame which comes from the camera unit or from the monitor unit and then goes into this yellow cable I just have a little bit of fear about this piece of cable you know you got it in the truck or whatever and that catches on something it's not well protected so I think that could be a weak spot uh so that's one of my dislikes uh as I mentioned earlier the markings on the cable for the distance are very hard to find and they're even when you find them they're pretty faint so um I think over time those maybe will wear off a little bit and be even tougher to find uh this clip which kind of keeps this from turning when you're not using it sometimes I find when you're unspooling it it wants to get caught up in here and it jams up and stuff I kind of wish I don't know I wish it was easier to take on and off and you could just set it off to the side but I just find that it kind of gets in the way sometimes I'm just going to clip this so those are my basic dislikes you know overall price wise for comparable unit I think you know they're pretty much on the money and like I said for just a normal homeowner you maybe aren't going to go out and spend seven hundred dollars for this type of thing or maybe you are I don't know but there are some places now that are starting to rent these types of systems so there's another option for you this may be renting if it's available in your area I think that's about all I can really say about the over overview of what it is why don't we take it inside and show you how I use it okay we just moved inside to my own personal basement I have in my house what is called non-crowed sewer line so back in the day somebody had a smart idea that we're going to take some layers of cardboard soak it in oil and we're going to use that as a pipe uh we're finding Now 50 60 years later that in some soil conditions that really wasn't a great idea so in my house I've got a cast pipe under the basement floor under the house basically but then it goes into this non-crowed cardboard and so this is a thing I regularly have to do is have every year my sewer line cleaned out because of tree roots they've found their way into some cracks or just busted their way through or whatever and so it's just something regular maintenance we have done every year at least once a year so I've pulled the carpet back like I always do I usually have somebody come in to to do that and I probably will continue to do that but now I can at least have a look uh every now and again just to see how things are going down there but my I'm basically at a clean out here so I'm at the exterior wall of my basement so this clean out is going down into the sewer and out to the street uh I've never had an issue with anything else going back to the other plumbing in the floor here I suppose now with the camera I could uh investigate it someday myself but we always start right here because the problem's always just outside uh the basement that I have the problem I have is just outside usually all the time okay so find some kind of clean out or something where you can access and uh check your if you in our case we're doing the sewer if you're doing that that's that's great you're going to have a cap on there of some kind that you've got to pull off so we'll just get this freed up it doesn't even too bad okay we'll get the cap out of the way so I've got cast iron right here and then it'll transition into the non-curred so you notice I've got gloves on I'm working with the sewer so I've got gloves on I've got some cleaning supplies here those are the basic things I need now I need to turn on the the camera okay now if you're doing this for somebody as a business it's always a good idea just to uh we're going to hit record see it's changed the time and when flashing record up there but what I was going to say if you're doing this as a business or whatever or somebody's paying you to to provide a report or an inspection for them it's always a good idea just to take the camera when you first turn it on and just just scan the room a little bit so they can tell right from the beginning that this is actually their home you haven't just generically thrown some kind of uh video of a pipe that's in somebody else's house so they know that this inspection is their home okay so we've got the recording going I've got things set up here I think that you can kind of see everything that's going on uh I've also got a tap running just the cold water running just on low to allow a little bit of water draining in the pipe and that just just kind of helps uh do a couple things just gives a little bit of lubrication for the end of the camera as it's sliding along helps protect it maybe a little bit and the other thing I like about it is it gives us a reference top or down sometimes when this feeds in there you know the camera spins around with the cable or whatever and then you kind of lose track of what's up or down at least if you got a bit of water trickling through there you always know where the bottom of the pipe is so so let's uh I don't think there's anything else to really tell you about let's just give this a shot so if you're watching the camera here we're going to start down the hole it does have the lights on there so I might be playing without a little bit there that's that's full blast right there it's giving us a good good shot so far so we'll just continue to move down so now I'm just coming to the bottom of the Y and you can see the water trickling there um in the bottom of the pipe like I said I ran just running a little bit of water looks like it's going to be enough so it's still cast iron right here we'll just let the camera get settled down in the bottom and get focused this is where I was talking about the strap seems to get in the way it's I don't know what to do about that it's kind of a pain honestly so there we are you can see like I said the camera doesn't always orientate itself up and down so we can see this is the bottom of the of the pipe because we can tell where the water is flowing oh actually and I've got the camera there I needed to flip it over I was looking back into the house there okay so we'll just maybe that's a little too much light for reflection we'll just continue on in there so you can see it the water is at the top of the screen so this is the the top of the pipe that we're looking at and so far we're not seeing any obstructions or anything haven't found any joints or breaks and here you can see what we're coming up to here already and this is always my trouble spot like I was saying before where I get some roots and things and it's like four feet outside of the basement actually let's see what's it say here yeah I'm not even five feet outside of the of the basement and I can see we're coming up onto some Roots already and I just had this done maybe eight months ago Okay so we've got definitely got some Roots already building that'll catch stuff and eventually starts to plug and I should be able to force my way through there we go through the roots and it's just that one spot so there's there's obviously a separation or a crack and I'll probably pretty much guarantee that's the transition from the cast iron in my case to the uh non-curred pipe so now we're in the non-crowd we've pushed our way through that bunch of uh Roots there and uh I would suspect we're not going to find any other issues but let's just have a look as we get out there a little bit you can hear this silly thing like I wish this would just clip on and off easy because it's kind of a pain see if I can get that off quick get rid of that strap okay so we'll just keep continuing on down see if we see anything else out of the ordinary but I don't think we're going to in my case but you can see how easy it is to feed this Cable in now that I've got rid of that strap are we coming up to something else here well here's another spot with a bit of weeds in it okay so we're out uh what do we got here I'm at about uh four meters so pretty much 15 to 20 feet out and I've got another little obstruction there so I probably should get the guy to come in and uh just blast through that stuff while it's going to be really easy to take care of okay we'll continue down kind of just going quickly because there's nothing really to see you know you can kind of inspect your pipe as you're going sometimes if you're in ABS or maybe cast iron or whatever you might see where there's a connection and it's it's disjointed or it's come apart you know and it's kind of offset things like that you can you can easily see when you're checking it out with the camera I don't have anything like that I've just got some spots for the darn roots come right through so here we are here there's some kind of a different something different there you can tell there's a transition or a joint maybe in that uh in that non-crowd possibly the other thing I'm looking for especially in the non-crowd is where it's squashing down or kind of out of shape and this could be partly what we're sort of seeing there you're also looking for low spots in the pipe and when we're running water like this you'll see a low spot by telling that the water has gotten deeper right there and it's kind of pooling there a little bit so far I haven't noticed that it's it's been flowing pretty good the whole way not sure what's happening right there you don't want to go out so far that you drop down into the city sewer because sometimes you get caught up with their connections and stuff and you can't get your camera back then you've lost the camera everything's looking good we still just have a nice trickle I haven't noticed any pools yet actually right there it's a little bit shallower so maybe the bottom of the pipe is pushed up just a little bit I've got full Lighting on so it's honestly looking pretty good and right there we might be what are we coming up on here see what we call for distance 12 meters uh so we're at about just about 40 feet so I'm coming close to being at my city sewer there right now so I'm not going to bother going any further I don't want to take the chance of dropping off the end everything looks pretty good except for those couple spots where we've got some definitely got some roots in there um so now when I call my guy to come and and clean that out with his system I can kind of tell them oh we've got that spot we always have that's just a few feet out of the basement here and then that other area I think that was at around six meters or something so he has a bit of an idea where he's going to run into an obstruction so now because we're using this down this down the sewer it's always a good idea to use some wipes just to kind of clean the cable as you're reeling it back in okay so normally you can just feed yourself back in I don't normally have it up on this stool so that might be a little bit of an issue here but we'll get it uh we'll get it feeding back in I'm just cleaning the cable as we go so it spools all back on there I'm using disinfectant wipes in my case because you just never know where I'm going to use this next once I've used it in a sewer I'd never use it in any kind of drinking water situation obviously but just in case but I'm just finding it's wanting to slide off the stool I put it up on here I just put it up higher so you guys could see what was going on and it's wanting to slide around there we go so I'm pulling back out foreign okay there was our one or farther out root spot I just want to see see this what I was saying about one of my dislikes it's hard to find those measurements I've got it marked got the the cable marked here and even then I'm having trouble finding the here it is so that's at about four meters out I was just curious so I could tell the guy who's going to do the cleaning where to expect to see that and we're just about out of there there's the other spot and the camera is almost up there getting ready to come up the top here there we are we're back in the house okay so we'll just wipe that off here quick into that camera okay well we got that that all wrapped up hopefully that explained what we had to do and we'll do our video wrap up so as you see a sewer inspection camera well I shouldn't even say sewer an inspection camera it could be a very handy tool for a lot of different things I think you noticed how easy it was to use in the situation we just showed you inspecting that that sewer it's got lots of good features this particular one you know it might be one of those things that a guy just needs to have in his Arsenal so I'm kind of glad I've got it now and the more and more I use it the more I like it so anyways uh as always please click the Subscribe button if you've never have before it's right down there take a look click that blow your fingers right there click the thumbs up that helps us out a lot and also a lot of people don't realize that down in the description right below here there's just a couple lines you'll see in it it says description or says open or something click that because in there we'll have some links to some of our other stuff for them and that sort of thing and as well we'll throw a Amazon affiliate Link in for uh inspection cameras down there thanks a lot for watchinghi I'm Shannon from houseimprovements.com and today's video I'm going to demonstrate this uh inspection camera this camera was sent out to us by a company and uh you know it was a gift we always tell people you can send out whatever you want I'm going to try it for a while if I like it you might get a video you might get an article in the Forum whatever and that's the case here so they sent out this camera can be used to inspect sewers conduit ductwork pretty well anywhere that you can stick a camera with a cable on you should be able to use this wet or dry I've been playing around with it a little bit and I can definitely see some benefits to my own renovation business and as well to even uh even folks who are flipping houses you know you could pay for this pretty quickly you know in today's age of everybody wants inspections on their sewers and that sort of thing this this camera in Canada here retails I've seen as high as 700 when you think about a two to four hundred dollar cost to have somebody come in and do an inspection for you and give you that recording uh you know a couple flips and you got this thing paid for and there's going to be a million other things I think that you'll find that you'd use it for so anyways I just want to run through some of the basic features of this this unit it's all all one unit which is nice I really like that so everything comes as you see um it's pretty compact like really it's got a good hard case so you can throw this in the backseat of the truck and not worry about it getting damaged really some are a little more you know the screen isn't protected that sort of thing so they're not quite as as uh robust I guess so anyways they did send us this out um they're not paying us to do a review I'm going to give you my likes and dislikes about it here in a few minutes but first let's just have a look at the unit itself so as you've seen it's in the stand it'll stand up on its own it's well well weighted well balanced but when you're using it it's going to be used in this type of position okay so they've got a clip here that basically keeps the spool from turning when you when you're not wanting it to turn okay your camera is in here right in here let's build just got to get it out of there that's the one thing I found a little clumsy with it once you've got it out and started it's good to go so you've got a color camera LED lighting I've put this protector on it which this unit comes with so when I'm pushing it through places it just keeps it up off the surface a little bit and protects the edge of the camera it's all stainless steel it's kind of got a Spring end in it so you can get around corners and stuff a little easier inside the box here is all your your controls and your viewing so there's a few different things this is like a sun shade that you could put up here if you're using it outside I haven't used it outside yet but it comes with that so you can help you see the screen there's some instructions there's a bag of goodies here this you could you could actually remove this protector that I put on and put this one on with the wheels so if you're going inside I don't know what that is about a three inch diameter pipe or bigger this would just keep it up off the bottom a little bit I haven't actually used those at all I've just put this protector on it seems to be fine uh comes with another little kit with there's some caps in there and at first I thought they were they were caps for the to protect the lens but there's not a big enough cap that covers that lens so not real sure maybe when you take this all unscrew it maybe they're caps for the end of the air I'm not too sure a little screwdriver for mounting these accessories but it basically comes with all that there's a charging cord there and then inside oops actually I can lift it out I don't know why I'm lifting the whole thing inside here is the basically the main controls and the battery so there's a charging port an on off switch there's a dial here to adjust the brightness of the LEDs all your cable connections for video and and everything are right there so there is a display here when you turn it on tells you that you've got power gives you a battery indicator they say that a lot I haven't used it this long but they say it'll last about eight hours which is pretty darn good really so um I'd have to believe them I haven't ran it that long continuously okay so that all fits in there and I'll just turn that on and I don't wanna cameraman doesn't want to be on TV so I'll make sure the camera isn't facing him so I've turned on the unit here I'm going to power up the screen it's a nine inch LEL uh LCD screen not LED it's an LCD screen so pretty decent quality but you can see it's got a pretty good quality camera especially at a close-up distance you know that pegboard over there is six feet away from the camera and it's it picks everything up quite nicely um now the nice thing about this it comes with a memory card so there's a card right here I forget the size of the card but anyways there's a card there so you can record and take photos as well of whatever you're looking at so that's good if you're if you're actually in the business of doing sewer inspections you can you can record whatever you're doing and give the homeowner a copy so that's really nice there's another menu here for adjusting your contrast and the time and all that kind of stuff so I don't think I need to go through that at all that all is uh really good quality down here in the corner it's a little light you might not pick up on it but it's actually got the date and the time and everything right there so that's really good if you are you know in the business and and need to record this for somebody so basically what you're doing is whatever you're inspecting you're just feeding this camera down that tube or the pipe or the hose or duct or whatever you're going into and as well on the on the cable some units will actually show the distance that you've gone on the screen this one doesn't but they do have the they do have and it's really hard to see but there is markings on the cable this one's in meters uh 40 inches in a meter basically what I found is those are hard to find when you're actually you know you got it down the drain or whatever you're scoping and you're also and you're trying to see where this Mark is so what I did for a lot of this one is I put some extra marks all the way around the line here so I can quickly identify that okay this is where I need to look for the for the distance marked on the cable so that's just something I did I don't know how long that's going to last with cleaning and handling and everything but that's what I did to to make it easier to find the to find the uh the distance thing so I'm just going to turn this off feed this all back in there feeds a little easier when I'm standing the right way but um so charger yeah I think I covered all the basics of what's included with this unit now my likes and dislikes like us like I said all these companies you want to send me out whatever I'll have a look at it and if it makes a video or an article I'm giving my honest opinion and I'm only giving that opinion after I've used it so so these are my likes and my and my dislikes my likes I like the screen it's really good quality good size screen to be able to view whatever you're looking at I like that it has the ability to record and take pictures that's that's awesome uh it's fairly compact you know overall the unit you know considering this is a hundred and uh 50 feet uh what is that like 40 some meters 45 meters I just forget um so it's it's good length of coil and it's still fairly compact so I like that it's light I don't know what the weight is but it basically weighs nothing uh camera quality is really good so that's all good oh yeah here's my other point it's 45 meters 150 feet so has a good length of cable and they they do have other models with longer and shorter cables my dislikes right underneath here let me just close this up right underneath here this little piece of cable that comes out of the frame which comes from the camera unit or from the monitor unit and then goes into this yellow cable I just have a little bit of fear about this piece of cable you know you got it in the truck or whatever and that catches on something it's not well protected so I think that could be a weak spot uh so that's one of my dislikes uh as I mentioned earlier the markings on the cable for the distance are very hard to find and they're even when you find them they're pretty faint so um I think over time those maybe will wear off a little bit and be even tougher to find uh this clip which kind of keeps this from turning when you're not using it sometimes I find when you're unspooling it it wants to get caught up in here and it jams up and stuff I kind of wish I don't know I wish it was easier to take on and off and you could just set it off to the side but I just find that it kind of gets in the way sometimes I'm just going to clip this so those are my basic dislikes you know overall price wise for comparable unit I think you know they're pretty much on the money and like I said for just a normal homeowner you maybe aren't going to go out and spend seven hundred dollars for this type of thing or maybe you are I don't know but there are some places now that are starting to rent these types of systems so there's another option for you this may be renting if it's available in your area I think that's about all I can really say about the over overview of what it is why don't we take it inside and show you how I use it okay we just moved inside to my own personal basement I have in my house what is called non-crowed sewer line so back in the day somebody had a smart idea that we're going to take some layers of cardboard soak it in oil and we're going to use that as a pipe uh we're finding Now 50 60 years later that in some soil conditions that really wasn't a great idea so in my house I've got a cast pipe under the basement floor under the house basically but then it goes into this non-crowed cardboard and so this is a thing I regularly have to do is have every year my sewer line cleaned out because of tree roots they've found their way into some cracks or just busted their way through or whatever and so it's just something regular maintenance we have done every year at least once a year so I've pulled the carpet back like I always do I usually have somebody come in to to do that and I probably will continue to do that but now I can at least have a look uh every now and again just to see how things are going down there but my I'm basically at a clean out here so I'm at the exterior wall of my basement so this clean out is going down into the sewer and out to the street uh I've never had an issue with anything else going back to the other plumbing in the floor here I suppose now with the camera I could uh investigate it someday myself but we always start right here because the problem's always just outside uh the basement that I have the problem I have is just outside usually all the time okay so find some kind of clean out or something where you can access and uh check your if you in our case we're doing the sewer if you're doing that that's that's great you're going to have a cap on there of some kind that you've got to pull off so we'll just get this freed up it doesn't even too bad okay we'll get the cap out of the way so I've got cast iron right here and then it'll transition into the non-curred so you notice I've got gloves on I'm working with the sewer so I've got gloves on I've got some cleaning supplies here those are the basic things I need now I need to turn on the the camera okay now if you're doing this for somebody as a business it's always a good idea just to uh we're going to hit record see it's changed the time and when flashing record up there but what I was going to say if you're doing this as a business or whatever or somebody's paying you to to provide a report or an inspection for them it's always a good idea just to take the camera when you first turn it on and just just scan the room a little bit so they can tell right from the beginning that this is actually their home you haven't just generically thrown some kind of uh video of a pipe that's in somebody else's house so they know that this inspection is their home okay so we've got the recording going I've got things set up here I think that you can kind of see everything that's going on uh I've also got a tap running just the cold water running just on low to allow a little bit of water draining in the pipe and that just just kind of helps uh do a couple things just gives a little bit of lubrication for the end of the camera as it's sliding along helps protect it maybe a little bit and the other thing I like about it is it gives us a reference top or down sometimes when this feeds in there you know the camera spins around with the cable or whatever and then you kind of lose track of what's up or down at least if you got a bit of water trickling through there you always know where the bottom of the pipe is so so let's uh I don't think there's anything else to really tell you about let's just give this a shot so if you're watching the camera here we're going to start down the hole it does have the lights on there so I might be playing without a little bit there that's that's full blast right there it's giving us a good good shot so far so we'll just continue to move down so now I'm just coming to the bottom of the Y and you can see the water trickling there um in the bottom of the pipe like I said I ran just running a little bit of water looks like it's going to be enough so it's still cast iron right here we'll just let the camera get settled down in the bottom and get focused this is where I was talking about the strap seems to get in the way it's I don't know what to do about that it's kind of a pain honestly so there we are you can see like I said the camera doesn't always orientate itself up and down so we can see this is the bottom of the of the pipe because we can tell where the water is flowing oh actually and I've got the camera there I needed to flip it over I was looking back into the house there okay so we'll just maybe that's a little too much light for reflection we'll just continue on in there so you can see it the water is at the top of the screen so this is the the top of the pipe that we're looking at and so far we're not seeing any obstructions or anything haven't found any joints or breaks and here you can see what we're coming up to here already and this is always my trouble spot like I was saying before where I get some roots and things and it's like four feet outside of the basement actually let's see what's it say here yeah I'm not even five feet outside of the of the basement and I can see we're coming up onto some Roots already and I just had this done maybe eight months ago Okay so we've got definitely got some Roots already building that'll catch stuff and eventually starts to plug and I should be able to force my way through there we go through the roots and it's just that one spot so there's there's obviously a separation or a crack and I'll probably pretty much guarantee that's the transition from the cast iron in my case to the uh non-curred pipe so now we're in the non-crowd we've pushed our way through that bunch of uh Roots there and uh I would suspect we're not going to find any other issues but let's just have a look as we get out there a little bit you can hear this silly thing like I wish this would just clip on and off easy because it's kind of a pain see if I can get that off quick get rid of that strap okay so we'll just keep continuing on down see if we see anything else out of the ordinary but I don't think we're going to in my case but you can see how easy it is to feed this Cable in now that I've got rid of that strap are we coming up to something else here well here's another spot with a bit of weeds in it okay so we're out uh what do we got here I'm at about uh four meters so pretty much 15 to 20 feet out and I've got another little obstruction there so I probably should get the guy to come in and uh just blast through that stuff while it's going to be really easy to take care of okay we'll continue down kind of just going quickly because there's nothing really to see you know you can kind of inspect your pipe as you're going sometimes if you're in ABS or maybe cast iron or whatever you might see where there's a connection and it's it's disjointed or it's come apart you know and it's kind of offset things like that you can you can easily see when you're checking it out with the camera I don't have anything like that I've just got some spots for the darn roots come right through so here we are here there's some kind of a different something different there you can tell there's a transition or a joint maybe in that uh in that non-crowd possibly the other thing I'm looking for especially in the non-crowd is where it's squashing down or kind of out of shape and this could be partly what we're sort of seeing there you're also looking for low spots in the pipe and when we're running water like this you'll see a low spot by telling that the water has gotten deeper right there and it's kind of pooling there a little bit so far I haven't noticed that it's it's been flowing pretty good the whole way not sure what's happening right there you don't want to go out so far that you drop down into the city sewer because sometimes you get caught up with their connections and stuff and you can't get your camera back then you've lost the camera everything's looking good we still just have a nice trickle I haven't noticed any pools yet actually right there it's a little bit shallower so maybe the bottom of the pipe is pushed up just a little bit I've got full Lighting on so it's honestly looking pretty good and right there we might be what are we coming up on here see what we call for distance 12 meters uh so we're at about just about 40 feet so I'm coming close to being at my city sewer there right now so I'm not going to bother going any further I don't want to take the chance of dropping off the end everything looks pretty good except for those couple spots where we've got some definitely got some roots in there um so now when I call my guy to come and and clean that out with his system I can kind of tell them oh we've got that spot we always have that's just a few feet out of the basement here and then that other area I think that was at around six meters or something so he has a bit of an idea where he's going to run into an obstruction so now because we're using this down this down the sewer it's always a good idea to use some wipes just to kind of clean the cable as you're reeling it back in okay so normally you can just feed yourself back in I don't normally have it up on this stool so that might be a little bit of an issue here but we'll get it uh we'll get it feeding back in I'm just cleaning the cable as we go so it spools all back on there I'm using disinfectant wipes in my case because you just never know where I'm going to use this next once I've used it in a sewer I'd never use it in any kind of drinking water situation obviously but just in case but I'm just finding it's wanting to slide off the stool I put it up on here I just put it up higher so you guys could see what was going on and it's wanting to slide around there we go so I'm pulling back out foreign okay there was our one or farther out root spot I just want to see see this what I was saying about one of my dislikes it's hard to find those measurements I've got it marked got the the cable marked here and even then I'm having trouble finding the here it is so that's at about four meters out I was just curious so I could tell the guy who's going to do the cleaning where to expect to see that and we're just about out of there there's the other spot and the camera is almost up there getting ready to come up the top here there we are we're back in the house okay so we'll just wipe that off here quick into that camera okay well we got that that all wrapped up hopefully that explained what we had to do and we'll do our video wrap up so as you see a sewer inspection camera well I shouldn't even say sewer an inspection camera it could be a very handy tool for a lot of different things I think you noticed how easy it was to use in the situation we just showed you inspecting that that sewer it's got lots of good features this particular one you know it might be one of those things that a guy just needs to have in his Arsenal so I'm kind of glad I've got it now and the more and more I use it the more I like it so anyways uh as always please click the Subscribe button if you've never have before it's right down there take a look click that blow your fingers right there click the thumbs up that helps us out a lot and also a lot of people don't realize that down in the description right below here there's just a couple lines you'll see in it it says description or says open or something click that because in there we'll have some links to some of our other stuff for them and that sort of thing and as well we'll throw a Amazon affiliate Link in for uh inspection cameras down there thanks a lot for watchinghi I'm Shannon from houseimprovements.com and today's video I'm going to demonstrate this uh inspection camera this camera was sent out to us by a company and uh you know it was a gift we always tell people you can send out whatever you want I'm going to try it for a while if I like it you might get a video you might get an article in the Forum whatever and that's the case here so they sent out this camera can be used to inspect sewers conduit ductwork pretty well anywhere that you can stick a camera with a cable on you should be able to use this wet or dry I've been playing around with it a little bit and I can definitely see some benefits to my own renovation business and as well to even uh even folks who are flipping houses you know you could pay for this pretty quickly you know in today's age of everybody wants inspections on their sewers and that sort of thing this this camera in Canada here retails I've seen as high as 700 when you think about a two to four hundred dollar cost to have somebody come in and do an inspection for you and give you that recording uh you know a couple flips and you got this thing paid for and there's going to be a million other things I think that you'll find that you'd use it for so anyways I just want to run through some of the basic features of this this unit it's all all one unit which is nice I really like that so everything comes as you see um it's pretty compact like really it's got a good hard case so you can throw this in the backseat of the truck and not worry about it getting damaged really some are a little more you know the screen isn't protected that sort of thing so they're not quite as as uh robust I guess so anyways they did send us this out um they're not paying us to do a review I'm going to give you my likes and dislikes about it here in a few minutes but first let's just have a look at the unit itself so as you've seen it's in the stand it'll stand up on its own it's well well weighted well balanced but when you're using it it's going to be used in this type of position okay so they've got a clip here that basically keeps the spool from turning when you when you're not wanting it to turn okay your camera is in here right in here let's build just got to get it out of there that's the one thing I found a little clumsy with it once you've got it out and started it's good to go so you've got a color camera LED lighting I've put this protector on it which this unit comes with so when I'm pushing it through places it just keeps it up off the surface a little bit and protects the edge of the camera it's all stainless steel it's kind of got a Spring end in it so you can get around corners and stuff a little easier inside the box here is all your your controls and your viewing so there's a few different things this is like a sun shade that you could put up here if you're using it outside I haven't used it outside yet but it comes with that so you can help you see the screen there's some instructions there's a bag of goodies here this you could you could actually remove this protector that I put on and put this one on with the wheels so if you're going inside I don't know what that is about a three inch diameter pipe or bigger this would just keep it up off the bottom a little bit I haven't actually used those at all I've just put this protector on it seems to be fine uh comes with another little kit with there's some caps in there and at first I thought they were they were caps for the to protect the lens but there's not a big enough cap that covers that lens so not real sure maybe when you take this all unscrew it maybe they're caps for the end of the air I'm not too sure a little screwdriver for mounting these accessories but it basically comes with all that there's a charging cord there and then inside oops actually I can lift it out I don't know why I'm lifting the whole thing inside here is the basically the main controls and the battery so there's a charging port an on off switch there's a dial here to adjust the brightness of the LEDs all your cable connections for video and and everything are right there so there is a display here when you turn it on tells you that you've got power gives you a battery indicator they say that a lot I haven't used it this long but they say it'll last about eight hours which is pretty darn good really so um I'd have to believe them I haven't ran it that long continuously okay so that all fits in there and I'll just turn that on and I don't wanna cameraman doesn't want to be on TV so I'll make sure the camera isn't facing him so I've turned on the unit here I'm going to power up the screen it's a nine inch LEL uh LCD screen not LED it's an LCD screen so pretty decent quality but you can see it's got a pretty good quality camera especially at a close-up distance you know that pegboard over there is six feet away from the camera and it's it picks everything up quite nicely um now the nice thing about this it comes with a memory card so there's a card right here I forget the size of the card but anyways there's a card there so you can record and take photos as well of whatever you're looking at so that's good if you're if you're actually in the business of doing sewer inspections you can you can record whatever you're doing and give the homeowner a copy so that's really nice there's another menu here for adjusting your contrast and the time and all that kind of stuff so I don't think I need to go through that at all that all is uh really good quality down here in the corner it's a little light you might not pick up on it but it's actually got the date and the time and everything right there so that's really good if you are you know in the business and and need to record this for somebody so basically what you're doing is whatever you're inspecting you're just feeding this camera down that tube or the pipe or the hose or duct or whatever you're going into and as well on the on the cable some units will actually show the distance that you've gone on the screen this one doesn't but they do have the they do have and it's really hard to see but there is markings on the cable this one's in meters uh 40 inches in a meter basically what I found is those are hard to find when you're actually you know you got it down the drain or whatever you're scoping and you're also and you're trying to see where this Mark is so what I did for a lot of this one is I put some extra marks all the way around the line here so I can quickly identify that okay this is where I need to look for the for the distance marked on the cable so that's just something I did I don't know how long that's going to last with cleaning and handling and everything but that's what I did to to make it easier to find the to find the uh the distance thing so I'm just going to turn this off feed this all back in there feeds a little easier when I'm standing the right way but um so charger yeah I think I covered all the basics of what's included with this unit now my likes and dislikes like us like I said all these companies you want to send me out whatever I'll have a look at it and if it makes a video or an article I'm giving my honest opinion and I'm only giving that opinion after I've used it so so these are my likes and my and my dislikes my likes I like the screen it's really good quality good size screen to be able to view whatever you're looking at I like that it has the ability to record and take pictures that's that's awesome uh it's fairly compact you know overall the unit you know considering this is a hundred and uh 50 feet uh what is that like 40 some meters 45 meters I just forget um so it's it's good length of coil and it's still fairly compact so I like that it's light I don't know what the weight is but it basically weighs nothing uh camera quality is really good so that's all good oh yeah here's my other point it's 45 meters 150 feet so has a good length of cable and they they do have other models with longer and shorter cables my dislikes right underneath here let me just close this up right underneath here this little piece of cable that comes out of the frame which comes from the camera unit or from the monitor unit and then goes into this yellow cable I just have a little bit of fear about this piece of cable you know you got it in the truck or whatever and that catches on something it's not well protected so I think that could be a weak spot uh so that's one of my dislikes uh as I mentioned earlier the markings on the cable for the distance are very hard to find and they're even when you find them they're pretty faint so um I think over time those maybe will wear off a little bit and be even tougher to find uh this clip which kind of keeps this from turning when you're not using it sometimes I find when you're unspooling it it wants to get caught up in here and it jams up and stuff I kind of wish I don't know I wish it was easier to take on and off and you could just set it off to the side but I just find that it kind of gets in the way sometimes I'm just going to clip this so those are my basic dislikes you know overall price wise for comparable unit I think you know they're pretty much on the money and like I said for just a normal homeowner you maybe aren't going to go out and spend seven hundred dollars for this type of thing or maybe you are I don't know but there are some places now that are starting to rent these types of systems so there's another option for you this may be renting if it's available in your area I think that's about all I can really say about the over overview of what it is why don't we take it inside and show you how I use it okay we just moved inside to my own personal basement I have in my house what is called non-crowed sewer line so back in the day somebody had a smart idea that we're going to take some layers of cardboard soak it in oil and we're going to use that as a pipe uh we're finding Now 50 60 years later that in some soil conditions that really wasn't a great idea so in my house I've got a cast pipe under the basement floor under the house basically but then it goes into this non-crowed cardboard and so this is a thing I regularly have to do is have every year my sewer line cleaned out because of tree roots they've found their way into some cracks or just busted their way through or whatever and so it's just something regular maintenance we have done every year at least once a year so I've pulled the carpet back like I always do I usually have somebody come in to to do that and I probably will continue to do that but now I can at least have a look uh every now and again just to see how things are going down there but my I'm basically at a clean out here so I'm at the exterior wall of my basement so this clean out is going down into the sewer and out to the street uh I've never had an issue with anything else going back to the other plumbing in the floor here I suppose now with the camera I could uh investigate it someday myself but we always start right here because the problem's always just outside uh the basement that I have the problem I have is just outside usually all the time okay so find some kind of clean out or something where you can access and uh check your if you in our case we're doing the sewer if you're doing that that's that's great you're going to have a cap on there of some kind that you've got to pull off so we'll just get this freed up it doesn't even too bad okay we'll get the cap out of the way so I've got cast iron right here and then it'll transition into the non-curred so you notice I've got gloves on I'm working with the sewer so I've got gloves on I've got some cleaning supplies here those are the basic things I need now I need to turn on the the camera okay now if you're doing this for somebody as a business it's always a good idea just to uh we're going to hit record see it's changed the time and when flashing record up there but what I was going to say if you're doing this as a business or whatever or somebody's paying you to to provide a report or an inspection for them it's always a good idea just to take the camera when you first turn it on and just just scan the room a little bit so they can tell right from the beginning that this is actually their home you haven't just generically thrown some kind of uh video of a pipe that's in somebody else's house so they know that this inspection is their home okay so we've got the recording going I've got things set up here I think that you can kind of see everything that's going on uh I've also got a tap running just the cold water running just on low to allow a little bit of water draining in the pipe and that just just kind of helps uh do a couple things just gives a little bit of lubrication for the end of the camera as it's sliding along helps protect it maybe a little bit and the other thing I like about it is it gives us a reference top or down sometimes when this feeds in there you know the camera spins around with the cable or whatever and then you kind of lose track of what's up or down at least if you got a bit of water trickling through there you always know where the bottom of the pipe is so so let's uh I don't think there's anything else to really tell you about let's just give this a shot so if you're watching the camera here we're going to start down the hole it does have the lights on there so I might be playing without a little bit there that's that's full blast right there it's giving us a good good shot so far so we'll just continue to move down so now I'm just coming to the bottom of the Y and you can see the water trickling there um in the bottom of the pipe like I said I ran just running a little bit of water looks like it's going to be enough so it's still cast iron right here we'll just let the camera get settled down in the bottom and get focused this is where I was talking about the strap seems to get in the way it's I don't know what to do about that it's kind of a pain honestly so there we are you can see like I said the camera doesn't always orientate itself up and down so we can see this is the bottom of the of the pipe because we can tell where the water is flowing oh actually and I've got the camera there I needed to flip it over I was looking back into the house there okay so we'll just maybe that's a little too much light for reflection we'll just continue on in there so you can see it the water is at the top of the screen so this is the the top of the pipe that we're looking at and so far we're not seeing any obstructions or anything haven't found any joints or breaks and here you can see what we're coming up to here already and this is always my trouble spot like I was saying before where I get some roots and things and it's like four feet outside of the basement actually let's see what's it say here yeah I'm not even five feet outside of the of the basement and I can see we're coming up onto some Roots already and I just had this done maybe eight months ago Okay so we've got definitely got some Roots already building that'll catch stuff and eventually starts to plug and I should be able to force my way through there we go through the roots and it's just that one spot so there's there's obviously a separation or a crack and I'll probably pretty much guarantee that's the transition from the cast iron in my case to the uh non-curred pipe so now we're in the non-crowd we've pushed our way through that bunch of uh Roots there and uh I would suspect we're not going to find any other issues but let's just have a look as we get out there a little bit you can hear this silly thing like I wish this would just clip on and off easy because it's kind of a pain see if I can get that off quick get rid of that strap okay so we'll just keep continuing on down see if we see anything else out of the ordinary but I don't think we're going to in my case but you can see how easy it is to feed this Cable in now that I've got rid of that strap are we coming up to something else here well here's another spot with a bit of weeds in it okay so we're out uh what do we got here I'm at about uh four meters so pretty much 15 to 20 feet out and I've got another little obstruction there so I probably should get the guy to come in and uh just blast through that stuff while it's going to be really easy to take care of okay we'll continue down kind of just going quickly because there's nothing really to see you know you can kind of inspect your pipe as you're going sometimes if you're in ABS or maybe cast iron or whatever you might see where there's a connection and it's it's disjointed or it's come apart you know and it's kind of offset things like that you can you can easily see when you're checking it out with the camera I don't have anything like that I've just got some spots for the darn roots come right through so here we are here there's some kind of a different something different there you can tell there's a transition or a joint maybe in that uh in that non-crowd possibly the other thing I'm looking for especially in the non-crowd is where it's squashing down or kind of out of shape and this could be partly what we're sort of seeing there you're also looking for low spots in the pipe and when we're running water like this you'll see a low spot by telling that the water has gotten deeper right there and it's kind of pooling there a little bit so far I haven't noticed that it's it's been flowing pretty good the whole way not sure what's happening right there you don't want to go out so far that you drop down into the city sewer because sometimes you get caught up with their connections and stuff and you can't get your camera back then you've lost the camera everything's looking good we still just have a nice trickle I haven't noticed any pools yet actually right there it's a little bit shallower so maybe the bottom of the pipe is pushed up just a little bit I've got full Lighting on so it's honestly looking pretty good and right there we might be what are we coming up on here see what we call for distance 12 meters uh so we're at about just about 40 feet so I'm coming close to being at my city sewer there right now so I'm not going to bother going any further I don't want to take the chance of dropping off the end everything looks pretty good except for those couple spots where we've got some definitely got some roots in there um so now when I call my guy to come and and clean that out with his system I can kind of tell them oh we've got that spot we always have that's just a few feet out of the basement here and then that other area I think that was at around six meters or something so he has a bit of an idea where he's going to run into an obstruction so now because we're using this down this down the sewer it's always a good idea to use some wipes just to kind of clean the cable as you're reeling it back in okay so normally you can just feed yourself back in I don't normally have it up on this stool so that might be a little bit of an issue here but we'll get it uh we'll get it feeding back in I'm just cleaning the cable as we go so it spools all back on there I'm using disinfectant wipes in my case because you just never know where I'm going to use this next once I've used it in a sewer I'd never use it in any kind of drinking water situation obviously but just in case but I'm just finding it's wanting to slide off the stool I put it up on here I just put it up higher so you guys could see what was going on and it's wanting to slide around there we go so I'm pulling back out foreign okay there was our one or farther out root spot I just want to see see this what I was saying about one of my dislikes it's hard to find those measurements I've got it marked got the the cable marked here and even then I'm having trouble finding the here it is so that's at about four meters out I was just curious so I could tell the guy who's going to do the cleaning where to expect to see that and we're just about out of there there's the other spot and the camera is almost up there getting ready to come up the top here there we are we're back in the house okay so we'll just wipe that off here quick into that camera okay well we got that that all wrapped up hopefully that explained what we had to do and we'll do our video wrap up so as you see a sewer inspection camera well I shouldn't even say sewer an inspection camera it could be a very handy tool for a lot of different things I think you noticed how easy it was to use in the situation we just showed you inspecting that that sewer it's got lots of good features this particular one you know it might be one of those things that a guy just needs to have in his Arsenal so I'm kind of glad I've got it now and the more and more I use it the more I like it so anyways uh as always please click the Subscribe button if you've never have before it's right down there take a look click that blow your fingers right there click the thumbs up that helps us out a lot and also a lot of people don't realize that down in the description right below here there's just a couple lines you'll see in it it says description or says open or something click that because in there we'll have some links to some of our other stuff for them and that sort of thing and as well we'll throw a Amazon affiliate Link in for uh inspection cameras down there thanks a lot for watching\n"