Look inside the drains before you sign for a depot

22 October 2026

No sensible driver accepts a trailer without walking round it. Tyres, lights, curtains, seals, the condition of the floor. Yet firms take on leases and freeholds for whole depots knowing no more about the drainage than the position of a few manhole covers and a faint line on an old plan.

What sits under a yard

A freight yard asks a lot of its drains. Heavy axles pass over chambers all day, surface water carries grit off the trailers, a wash bay sends dirty water one way and the welfare block sends foul water another, and somewhere there may be an interceptor protecting the outfall from oil. Older sites have often been extended in stages, so the pipework under the newest concrete may join something much older under the original yard. Previous tenants rarely leave a reliable record.

A CCTV survey puts a camera into the accessible pipes and records what it finds: cracks, displaced joints, root entry, deformation, silt and debris, and details of the pipe sections reached from each access point. That information belongs in the decision to take on the site, in the same way a condition report belongs with a used tractor unit.

What a camera cannot tell you

A survey is only as good as its access. If chambers are buried under resurfacing, pipes are full of water or debris, or a run is too small or damaged for the camera to pass, the report will have gaps, and a good surveyor says so plainly. That is not a fault in the method. It is the honest limit of it, and it is far better to know where the unknowns are than to read a report that pretends there are none.

Ask what was inspected, from which access points, and what could not be reached. A plan marking the surveyed lines against the yard layout is worth more than a folder of video with no context.

Booking it like any other job

Treat the survey as a planned visit. Say whether it is for a purchase or lease, for building work, or for a recurring problem such as a gully that floods every time it rains. Move trailers off the chambers the surveyor needs, and warn the yard that a van and crew will be working at ground level among moving vehicles. Drain CCTV covers camera surveys for property purchases, building work and drainage defects, and it is straightforward about what an inspection can establish and where it stops, which helps when you are setting your own expectations.

Then keep the report. When an argument about dilapidations comes up at the end of a lease, a dated survey from the week you moved in is the drainage version of a signed delivery note, rather than relying on recollections of what was there.