You probably have several customers who are regular stops for your techs. Every six or eight months, like clockwork, one of your crew will get called to these folks' houses to snake out a clogged-up drain line. Usually those calls will come after dinner on Sunday night, but that's a topic for another story.

    These calls are pretty nice, especially if they do, in fact, come in on Sunday night. Calls like this will typically wind up in a $200 or $300 bill being presented to a grateful customer. Get enough of those jobs and your business is living on Big Street in the middle of Fat City, right?

    Well, uh...no.

    It IS nice to be able to count on that $200 or $300 from that customer every few months. But having the capability to solve that customer's recurring problem once and for all with one trip has its benefits, too. And they're arguably better for business.

    First of all, you'll probably be able to bill a larger amount since there's going to be a little more work involved than just snaking the drain lines. You might have to do some excavation and replace a pipe, for example. Second, eliminating the recurring penny-ante calls will free up your techs to do more-and more profitable-work.

    The best way to solve these recurring problems for good is to simply have a look at what's going on down the line. That's where drain and sewer inspection cameras enter the picture. They're tools for the plumber in that they're a way to have a look down the tube to see what's hosed up and how to go about fixing it. It's also a tool that can be used to "sell" the customer--show them the video you took of the problem in the line, describe the problem, and then suggest a couple of different ways to go about fixing or correcting it.

    And that video can go a long way toward fostering increased customer satisfaction with the job you did. The customer can see the problem and then see the problem after you corrected it.  He or she even has a DVD with the video to keep for their records or simply as a souvenir.

    "That's a key point," said Scott Aiello, director of marketing for underground technologies for the Ridge Tool Co., in Elyria, Ohio. Ridge offers the familiar SeeSnake line of drain and sewer cameras and has recently come to market with the SeeSnake Micro, a small, hand-held viewer designed for hard-to-reach areas.

    "A plumber doesn't want to have to keep coming back," Aiello said. "He doesn't want to be cleaning that drain every six months. What he's hoping to do is get a larger repair job, a larger billable job than just clearing that drain or doing pipe inspection, for that matter. That's where the bigger revenue items are-whether it's rehabilitating that line through pipe lining or actually replacing it."

    Chris Vernon, marketing vice president for Rothenberger USA in Rockford., Ill., agreed, saying sewer and drain inspection cameras are becoming a more important part of the contractor's bag of tricks.<p>

"By showing the customer the problem, the contractor's diagnosis can gain the customers' confidence," Vernon, whose company offers the Rocam mobile cordless pipe camera, said. "By diagnosing the problem properly, the contractor can complete the job quickly and correctly."

    And profitably. Vernon said contractors can sometimes gross as much as $250 to have a look down a customer's drains and, depending on the cost of the camera system, the equipment could be fully amortized after as few as a dozen calls.

    Aiello at Ridge Tool said the amount of cash a camera system could add to a company's bottom line depends on several factors-the equipment being used and how it's being used. But the key is to use it to sell other and possibly larger jobs.

    "Cameras can pay for themselves quickly," he said. "The guys who are the most successful with the cameras are the guys using them to create other business."

    Vernon said Rothenberger will be bringing a couple of new additions to its line of products to market during the third quarter of this year. The Rocam Mini and the Rocam Plus, he said, are currently available in some European markets.

    The Rocam Mini features the five-inch monitor and polycarbonate housing of its larger sibling, but it comes with only 50 feet of cable and a mini camera head that can go through 1-inch pipe: "It's not self-leveling," Vernon said. "We had it down for a little preview at the Pumper & Cleaner Show [in February] and it got a pretty good response, especially among the septic guys-they don't need to go more than 50 feet. They just need to get out to the junction boxes and things to see what's going on."

    Instead of an onboard DVD or now all-but-obsolete VHS recorder, however, the Rocam Mini will have hookups into which the user can plug a preferred recording unit.

    The soon-to-be-available Rocam Plus will feature either 200- or 325 feet of push cable: "Both versions have color monitors and feature self-leveling heads," Vernon said. "The other thing that makes them interesting is that the Mini Module-the camera head that will be on the Rocam Mini-will be an accessory that's included with the Rocam Plus. Instead of having a big and a little camera, you can change the camera heads and have one unit that does both bigger and smaller jobs."

Rothenberger's good old Rocam mobile cordless pipe camera, pictured, is soon to be joined in the product line by the Rocam Mini and the Rocam Plus. Photo courtesy of Rothenberger.

General's Gen-Eye GL video inspection system now offers a self-leveling color camera that automatically keeps the picture right side up at all times as the camera glides through the line. Photo courtesy of General Pipe Cleaners.

The Rocam Mini is reflective of a trend that's long been a part of the electronics scene: Things get smaller and more feature packed as time goes on. A case in point is the Gen-Eye GL from General Pipe Cleaners in McKees Rocks, Pa.

    "Self-leveling cameras will get smaller and smaller," marketing vice president Marty Silverman said earlier. "And recording devices will keep up with technology."

    General's Gen-Eye GL video inspection system now offers a self-leveling color camera that automatically keeps the picture right side up at all times as the camera glides through the line. The compact stainless steel camera housing is less than 11/2-inch in diameter and features 16 LED's that will light up lines as large as 10 inches in diameter. Also standard is a DVD recorder, which has eclipsed the old-school VHS-style videotape recorder because the image quality is better, the blank discs are cheaper than tapes, they'll last longer and they're easier to store.

    Some equipment doesn't have the capability to record at all; instead it serves more as a high-tech inspection mirror. For example, Ridge Tool is soon to roll out the SeeSnake Micro, a small, hand-held inspection tool designed for hard-to-reach areas. The SeeSnake Micro is basically a pistol grip with an LCD video screen and a 3-foot cable for snaking down into hard-to-reach places. It was introduced within the past few months.

    "It hit the market live in January," Aiello said. "You can also add 3-foot extensions to it to make it longer but, for the most part, it's largely for outside-the-pipe applications. You could certainly inspect down into a P trap, maybe, but the cable on it is designed to have a memory so if you turn it to a particular angle it will stay there. There are many applications for this tool."

    It comes with the imager head and one cable, but up to nine additional extensions can be added to make it 30 feet long: "But, if you're trying to do that with it you have the wrong tool," Aiello said. "This technology continues to evolve, just like electronics anywhere. That covers everything from how people are recording to how they're operating their video inspection equipment."