Sewer Line Repair & Replacement
Spot repairs, section replacement and full laterals — quoted from camera footage you watch with us, never from a guess.
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Artisan Water Group
Sewer Camera Inspection in Lake in the Hills, IL
Your sewer lateral is the one pipe on the property where a minor problem and a catastrophic one look exactly the same from inside the bathroom. Both start as a slow drain.
- 5.0★ · 11 Google reviews
- Licensed & insured
- Free written estimates
- Locally owned
Need this handled today? Call and a real person answers — nights, weekends and holidays included. You get the price before we start.
The only way to tell them apart is to look. We run a self-levelling camera from the cleanout to the municipal connection and record the whole run, and you watch the monitor with us — not a summary afterward, the footage itself. Root intrusion, a belly holding standing water, a crack, an offset joint and twenty years of mineral scale look completely different on screen, and each one calls for a different fix and a very different bill.
That matters because sewer work is the easiest place in residential plumbing to be sold something you do not need. The evidence is four feet under your front lawn. Footage is what turns a sales conversation into an engineering one.
When to put a camera in the line
An inspection is cheap relative to what it prevents. These are the situations where it pays for itself most often.
You are buying a house
A standard home inspection does not include the sewer. The inspector runs a faucet, watches it drain, and moves on. In an older neighbourhood that is the single biggest blind spot in the whole transaction.
Backups that keep coming back
Cleared in October, backed up in February, cleared again in June. A line that needs clearing on a schedule has something structural going on inside it.
Someone has quoted you a sewer replacement
Before you spend five figures, look at the pipe. We will inspect and give you a second opinion on footage rather than on somebody's word.
A sunken or unusually green stripe across the lawn
A leaking lateral irrigates and fertilises the grass above it while the soil settles as material washes away. That stripe has a cause worth finding.
Mature trees near the line
Silver maples, willows and old parkway trees find any joint with moisture escaping. In neighbourhoods planted in the 1970s those trees are now big enough to matter.
You have never had it looked at
If the house is past forty and nobody has ever seen the inside of the lateral, an inspection is a reasonable one-time thing to do on a calm Tuesday.
How an inspection appointment works
It takes well under an hour on most homes, and you get to keep what we find.
1. Find the access
Usually a cleanout in the basement or just outside the foundation. If your home does not have an accessible one, we discuss the options before the visit rather than improvising on site.
2. Clear enough to see
A camera cannot read a line full of standing water and sludge. If the line is blocked we clear it first, because an inspection of a blockage is not an inspection of a pipe.
3. Run the full length, recording
Cleanout to municipal tap, narrating what we see. Pipe material, joint condition, root locations, bellies, cracks, offsets and scale all get noted as we pass them.
4. Locate and mark on the surface
A transmitting sonde in the camera head lets us pinpoint a defect above ground and read its depth. That turns 'somewhere in the front yard' into a spot and a number.
5. Watch it with us
You see the same screen we do. We would rather you form your own view of the pipe than take our word for it.
6. Leave you with the file
A copy of the recording and a plain-language summary: material, condition, defects, locations, depths and what each would take to address. That document is what you hand to an agent, an attorney or another contractor.
What the camera actually finds
Every finding falls into one of a few categories, and knowing which one you have determines everything that follows.
- Root intrusion — the most common finding in older neighbourhoods, visible as a curtain of fibres at a specific joint. Manageable, sometimes permanently fixable with a spot repair or liner.
- Bellies — low spots holding standing water where the pipe has sagged. These clog on a schedule forever until the section is re-sloped, and a liner will not fix one because it follows the existing grade.
- Cracks and offset joints — sections that have shifted apart. Soil enters, sewage exits, and roots follow.
- Collapse — pipe that has failed structurally. Not repairable by cleaning at any price.
- Scale and grease coating — narrowing without structural damage. This is the good outcome: it is a [hydro jetting](/services/hydro-jetting-lake-in-the-hills) job, not an excavation.
- Improper connections — a previous owner's basement bathroom tied in badly, or a downspout illegally connected to the sanitary line.
Buying a home in an older McHenry County neighbourhood
This is the highest-value use of a camera, and it is routinely skipped.
In older Crystal Lake, Cary, McHenry and Woodstock neighbourhoods, laterals were commonly laid as short clay tile sections with a joint every few feet, and the trees above them have had sixty years to work on those joints. We have found collapsed sections and root masses in homes that passed a general inspection without a comment.
Find something and you have leverage before closing — a credit, a repair, or a price adjustment. Find nothing and you have documented footage of a sound line. Either outcome beats discovering it in year two. Our guide to what a sewer camera inspection reveals before you buy walks through the whole process.
What an inspection costs depend on
This is one of the more affordable and predictable services we offer, with a few variables.
- Access
- An existing accessible cleanout is the straightforward case. Pulling a toilet to get into the line adds time and reassembly.
- Whether the line needs clearing first
- If the lateral is blocked, we cable it open before inspecting. That is separate work and we quote it separately.
- Length of the run
- A short run to a street tap reads faster than seventy feet through multiple bends.
- Locating and marking
- Sonde locating a defect and marking depth on the surface is quick, and it is what makes the footage actionable.
- Recording and written summary
- Included. We are not going to charge you extra for evidence of what we just looked at.
- Real estate timelines
- Inspection-period work sometimes needs same-week scheduling. We will tell you honestly whether we can hit your date.
An inspection costs a small fraction of a lateral replacement. It is the best-value service in this whole category, whichever way the footage comes out.
Sewer Camera Inspection FAQs
How much does a sewer camera inspection cost?
It is a fixed-scope job and one of the more affordable services we offer — a small fraction of what a lateral replacement costs. Given that it can either prevent an unnecessary excavation or catch a failing line before it backs up into a finished basement, it is the best money in this category.
Do I get a copy of the video?
Yes, always, along with a written plain-language summary. We are not going to ask you to make a five-figure decision based on something you watched once on a small screen in your basement.
What if my house does not have a sewer cleanout?
There are usually other access points, though some require pulling a toilet. We discuss it before the appointment rather than arriving and improvising. Worth knowing: a home with no accessible cleanout is itself a small red flag.
Can you tell how deep the problem is?
Yes. A transmitting sonde in the camera head lets us mark the location on the surface and read the depth, so a repair conversation becomes 'eleven feet out, six feet down' instead of a guess.
How long does it take?
Usually well under an hour on a home with an accessible cleanout and a clear line. Add time if the lateral needs cabling open before the camera can pass.
Often needed together
Related plumbing services
These come up on the same houses more often than not.
Trenchless Sewer Repair
Pipe lining and pipe bursting — a new sewer line through two small access pits instead of a trench across your driveway.
Learn moreHydro Jetting
High-pressure water that scours the pipe wall back to full diameter — the fix for lines that keep clogging after cabling.
Learn more
Worth reading first
More on this from our blog
Home Buying5 min readSewer Camera Inspections: What They Reveal Before You Buy a Home
Your home inspector will not look at the one pipe that can cost five figures. Forty minutes with a camera closes that gap.
Drains & Sewer6 min readTree Roots in Your Sewer Line? A Common Problem in Older Crystal Lake Neighborhoods
Roots do not attack sound pipe. They find a joint that is already leaking — which is why cutting them out is a treatment, not a cure.
Sewer Camera Inspection
Ready to get your sewer camera inspection handled?
Call and talk to the person who will do the work. Free written estimates on non-emergency sewer camera inspection, and a price before we start on anything urgent.
- 5.0 from 11 Google reviews
- Licensed & insured
- 24/7 emergency service
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Tell us what is going on and we will get back to you with a straight answer. No obligation, no pressure.
5.0 from 11 Google reviewsLicensed & insuredFree written estimates
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Please call (207) 419-2600 instead — a real person answers, nights and weekends included, and we can usually sort it faster on the phone anyway.
Why homeowners choose us for this
We are a licensed, insured, owner-operated shop based on Pine Street in Lake in the Hills. That means the person quoting the job is the person doing it, and nobody here is measured on how much they sold you.
Every recommendation starts with the water. At 26–28 grains per gallon, our supply is roughly six times harder than the national average, and it is the single biggest factor in how long anything in your plumbing lasts. Fixing the symptom without addressing that is how you end up calling someone again in two years.
And when a permit is required — water heaters, sewer work, gas piping — we pull it and show the fee on its own line. Ask every plumber you talk to for the same. Read more in our guide to plumbing permits in McHenry County.