5 Signs Your Sewer Line Needs a Camera Inspection

1. Clogs that keep coming back

One clog is life. The same line clogging every few months is a symptom — roots reaching through a joint, a sag (belly) collecting debris, or a partial collapse narrowing the pipe. Repeated cabling punches a hole through the blockage but leaves the cause in place. A camera finds the cause, so you can fix the problem once instead of renting it back every season.

2. Sewage odors indoors or out

A healthy sewer system is sealed and vented — you should never smell it. Persistent sewage odor in the basement, yard, or near floor drains means gas is escaping somewhere it shouldn't: a cracked pipe, a failed joint, or a dried-out trap. A camera locates the breach precisely, which turns 'dig up the yard and look' into a targeted repair.

3. A suspiciously lush or soggy lawn

A leaking lateral fertilizes and waters the soil above it. If one strip of grass is greener than the rest, or the ground stays spongy over the pipe's path in dry weather, your sewer may be irrigating the yard. Left alone, leaks erode soil and can settle driveways and walkways — the repair only gets bigger with time.

4. Multiple slow drains — with gurgling

One slow sink is a local clog. Every fixture draining slowly — with gurgling toilets when the washing machine empties — points to the main line struggling to breathe. That gurgle is air being pulled through water seals because the lateral can't move flow properly. It's one of the most reliable early warnings of a developing main-line blockage.

5. You're buying (or own) an older home

Standard home inspections do not include the sewer lateral. If the house was built before the 1980s — common in Tacoma's North End, older Seattle neighborhoods, and the first-ring suburbs like Burien — it may have clay or concrete pipe, both prime targets for root intrusion, and replacement can run five figures. A pre-purchase sewer scope is one of the highest-leverage inspections in real estate: our crews serving Vancouver and Federal Way regularly find defects that become seller credits at closing.

The inspection itself takes about an hour, and you keep the footage either way. If the line is healthy, you get peace of mind in writing. If it isn't, you get evidence, exact locations, and honest options — spot repair, lining, or trenchless sewer line replacement — before the failure chooses its own timing. Schedule one anywhere in our Washington service area.