Push Rod Drain Cameras

The original push rod cameras were black and white and you would attach the drain camera and its cable to a set of drain rods and push it into the system, we spent more time digging these things out than surveying as they were prone to becoming stuck. They would only negotiate slight bends or changes of direction as you went into the system but 9 times out of ten they would not pass through the same bend as you tried to retrieve the camera.

Nowadays the drain camera cable itself is sturdy enough to push the camera into the drain, most affective in 100mm and 150mm pipe work they can also be used in 225mm drains and sewers up to a certain distance.

There are now many push rod camera products on the market each with its own merits, some can be easily pushed on a straight run for 50 or 60 mtrs but they may struggle to negotiate more than one bend, others can pass through multiple bends and changes of direction but you will struggle to push them more than 30mtrs on a straight run.

There are also smaller units for pipe work down to 30mm in diameter and they usually have about 20mtrs of cable, they have their place and are handy to have in the van but I wouldn't use them on larger diameter pipe work on a regular basis.

Domestic Push Rod Drain Cameras

A standard push rod camera system will come with around 50mtrs of push rod and a self leveling colour camera head, these units are powered through mains electric or your generator and there are several battery run models on the market as well, most of the manufacturers also offer a built in sonde so that you can sonar trace and locate the buried chamber or collapsed section of pipe work that your survey has revealed

On-screen meterage is a must as is a text writer or built in software, you will be able to record your survey onto a hard drive, flash drive or directly onto a disc and you should be able to put this data through several of the software programme's available and produce a professional and detailed survey,

There are several variants on the above, you can get push rod cameras with a pan and rotate camera head, small reels with a thinner camera cable that can negotiate the traps on toilets and gullies and camera reels with a thicker cable that can be pushed well in excess of 50mtrs (in the right circumstances) which can be handy for surveying oval brick built sewer systems, culverts or other systems where you may not want to risk sending your crawler camera unit.