Sewer camera inspection in Midland.

Start with what the County says. Its 2018 plan for the Midland service district calls the village not currently served by public sewer, and describes the soils as poor for a conventional septic system. It also lists failing septic systems as a groundwater problem it wants addressed. Midland sits at about 327 feet in the Culpeper Basin, on what the County calls a former lakebed shared with Bealeton, Opal and Remington. In the village itself, a house drain more often runs to a tank in the yard than to a main in the street.

A camera can’t do much for that kind of line, and we won’t pretend it can. SwiftPro does no septic work, so we don’t run a camera toward a tank, check a drainfield or tell you a tank is sound. Septic questions go to the Fauquier County Health Department, the Virginia Department of Health’s local office, which issues the permits for septic systems and wells wherever public water and sewer don’t reach. We do camera a line that reaches a sewer main.

Midland’s housing runs old and new at once. ZIP 22728 counts 1,066 owner homes, more than nine in ten of them detached, with a median build year of 1986. Just under half went up before 1980 and a bit over one in five before 1960. A railroad company laid the village out in 1873, and the wood-frame houses at its core date mostly from 1880 through 1910. Their plumbing was most likely added later, routed around the framing with more bends than a newer house has. On a main, that gives the camera plenty to read.

On an FCWSA sewer, the pipe splits into two jobs. Everything from the main to your lot line, plus the lateral from there into the house, falls to you. FCWSA takes its mains and any service line under a public street, and it doesn’t repay a plumber. Midland’s wet years test that pipe. On August 10, 2022, Marsh Run left its banks and high water closed Route 610 in Midland. Footage with a distance from the house tells you which side of the lot line a defect is on.