A standard home inspection covers a lot of ground shallowly. The inspector turns fixtures on, looks under sinks, notes what is visible, and moves on. That is useful, and it is also blind to the two most expensive things in a house’s plumbing, the condition of the drain line under the yard and the condition of supply lines buried in a slab.

A dedicated plumbing inspection goes after exactly those. We camera the sewer line from the cleanout out to the connection, so you see the pipe material, its condition, whether roots are in it, and whether it holds proper grade. On a house from the cast iron era that single piece of information can be the difference between a fair price and an expensive surprise in your second year.

Sellers use this too, and it is the smarter side of the transaction. Knowing what a buyer’s inspector is going to find, before they find it, means you decide how to handle it instead of negotiating under pressure with a closing date approaching. Either way you get a written report with photos and video, describing what is there in plain terms.

Drain line condition is first, because it is the costliest unknown. Cast iron was standard for houses built roughly from the 1950s through the 1980s, and it fails by bottom rot, corroding from the inside along the bottom of the pipe until the underside is gone. A camera shows this immediately, and it is invisible from anywhere else in the house.

Supply lines come next. On slab construction, which is nearly everything here, the supply runs under the concrete where nobody can see it. What we can do is identify the material, check pressure and flow at fixtures, look at the accessible connections and the water heater, and watch the meter for evidence of loss. A house losing water under the slab shows itself at the meter even when nothing is visible.

Then the local specifics. If the property is on a low pressure sewer with a grinder pump, that pump is equipment with a condition and a service history, and it belongs in an inspection. Water heater age and installation, shutoff valve function, exposed fittings on the salt-air side of a coastal house, and whether previous repairs were done properly all go in the report as well.