Plumber Aurora: The City Will Watch Your Camera Footage For Free
The hardest thing about a sewer quote is that you cannot see the pipe. Somebody puts a camera down it, narrates what is on the screen, and hands you a number. Aurora is the only city we have written about that has done something about that. Aurora Water offers a free service: send in the video of your own lateral and a wastewater staff member will review it and consult on suggestions, next steps and potential resolutions.
The city describes it in exactly those terms, as a second opinion for homeowners who are uncertain about repairs or maintenance on their sewer line. That single service should change how anyone in Aurora handles a quote for buried work. Everything below is from what the city publishes, read in August 2026, with sources named at the foot and refusals stated where the city does not publish a figure.
The lead fact
A Municipal Second Opinion on a Contractor Quote
The mechanics are undramatic, which is what makes it usable. A video scope of your service line can be obtained from a plumber or any other vendor. The city notes that customers usually receive that video as a link or an email attachment, which can then simply be forwarded to Aurora Water. A wastewater staff member reviews it and comes back with suggestions, next steps and potential resolutions.
The city is explicit about who it is for: residents experiencing backups, or with questions or concerns about their lateral or private service main line. It is framed as a second opinion for exactly the situation where a homeowner cannot tell whether what they are being told is reasonable.
The scale the review comes from
A second opinion is worth what the person giving it knows, so the numbers behind the desk matter. The city’s wastewater division maintains more than 1,200 miles of sanitary sewer lines and pipes. Every year it cleans 662 miles, which the city also expresses as 3.5 million feet, and it CCTV inspects 95 miles, or 500,000 feet, of pipe.
Five hundred thousand feet of camera work a year is a very large amount of footage of pipe in this specific soil, at these specific depths, in these specific vintages of construction. When a wastewater staff member looks at a survey of your lateral, they are comparing it against that. It is a genuinely different reference set from the one any individual contractor carries.
Aurora also runs sanitary sewage and stormwater as two separate systems rather than a combined one, which matters more than it sounds. In a combined system a heavy storm can push the whole network toward capacity and produce backups that have nothing to do with your pipe. In a separated system, a sanitary backup during rain points much more directly at infiltration, and infiltration is on the city’s own list of things that go wrong with a private lateral. Our drain cleaning page covers what a survey should show, and sewer line repair covers what happens after it.
Who owns what
Yours Includes the Fitting That Joins the City Main
Aurora draws the line further out than most cities, and it says so without hedging. All pipes within your home, including the main lateral line, are your drainage system and your responsibility to maintain. Aurora Water maintains only the city main lines located in the public right of way, such as streets, alleys and easements.
The city then lists what a property owner is responsible for, item by item, and the second item is the one people do not expect.
- The service line from the sewer tap to the addressPlus all plumbing lines and services inside the building.
- The connection to the city main, including the tee or saddleThe fitting that physically joins your pipe to the city’s pipe is yours. Very few cities go this far in writing.
- Associated street or property damageIf repairs or maintenance on your service line or sewer tap affect the street or other property, that is on you too.
- Locating the service line and tapFinding it is part of the job, and part of your side of it.
The misconception the city names out loud
Aurora goes further than simply stating the rule. It writes that one of the most common misconceptions regarding wastewater infrastructure is that the utility provider will make the repairs and pay for the associated damages, and it states directly that it is the property owner’s responsibility to maintain and repair the sanitary sewer service line running from the home or building to the city’s sewer mains in the alley or right of way, as well as any resulting damages.
Read that alongside the free video review and a coherent picture appears. The city is not going to pay for your lateral, and it is not pretending otherwise. What it will do is help you understand what is wrong with it before you commit money. Those two positions fit together better than they first appear: a city that carries no repair liability has every reason to want homeowners well informed rather than panicked.
The symptom the city describes for a failed lateral is worth memorising because it is visible from inside the house. Where the main lateral sags, leaks or ruptures, you may notice a backup of water at the lowest level of the property: a floor drain, a lower-level shower, a tub or a toilet. Water appearing at the lowest fixture in the building while higher fixtures behave normally is the classic signature, and the city notes plainly that this issue is still part of your system and yours to fix. That is the point to call about emergency plumbing rather than to wait and see.
Getting hold of the right people
Two Numbers, and Which One Applies Depends on the Clock
Aurora Water publishes a split contact arrangement that is worth having before you need it rather than during. During business hours, defined as 7:30am to 5pm Monday to Friday excluding holidays, billing, customer service, emergencies and water reconnects all run through one number. Outside those hours, from 5pm to 7am on weekdays and all day at weekends and on holidays, emergencies and water reconnects run through a different one.
The reconnect detail is easy to skim past and matters at exactly the wrong moment. If a supply has been shut off and work is finished at eight in the evening, the number you need is not the one printed on the bill. Pay-by-phone and online payment options run twenty-four hours, but a human for an emergency does not sit on the same line around the clock.
The city also runs a lead service line replacement programme with its own dedicated hotline, and publishes that hotline specifically so residents can verify whether somebody claiming to be with the programme actually is. That is a fraud-prevention measure, and it is a reasonable habit to extend to any unexpected caller about your utilities. Denver runs a separate and differently-structured lead programme, which is covered on our Denver page; do not assume the two work the same way.
Aurora Water also publishes homeowner resources covering advanced metering, backflow prevention, service line insurance information, troubleshooting and repairs, and lawn and irrigation permits. The service line insurance page is information rather than a product: as with every utility we have looked at, check your existing homeowner policy before buying anything additional.
What the work looks like here
A Plumber Aurora Households Call For, Season by Season
Aurora is the third largest city in Colorado and spans an unusually wide range of building ages and lot types, from the older near-Denver neighbourhoods out to development that is still arriving on the southeastern edge. The work sorts by vintage more than by postcode.
Root intrusion in mature streets
Tree roots head the city’s own list of blockage causes. In the established neighbourhoods that is the first hypothesis for a recurring backup, and it is a camera question rather than a guessing one.
Infiltration through cracked pipe
The city’s second named failure mode. Because Aurora separates sanitary from storm, a sanitary problem that worsens in wet weather is a strong infiltration signal rather than a system-capacity one.
The lowest fixture in the house
Backup at a basement floor drain, lower shower, tub or toilet is the signature the city itself describes for a sagging, leaking or ruptured lateral. Treat it as urgent.
Grease, wipes and the winter kitchen
Fats, oils and grease and non-flushable paper are on the city list alongside roots. These are the failures that cluster around the holidays and they are almost entirely preventable.
One firm turns up often enough in Aurora search behaviour to be worth naming as evidence of a genuine local market, and we checked it rather than trusting the name: Done Plumbing and Heating publishes itself as a Denver plumbing, HVAC, drains and electrical business, which places it in the metro rather than in another state. We are not affiliated with them and cite them only as corroboration. It is worth saying, given how easily search results mislead, that the bare phrase “Aurora Plumbing” belongs to a long-established supply house on Aurora Avenue North in Seattle, Washington, and has nothing to do with this city at all.
Around the metro
Aurora Is Its Own Utility, Not a Denver Suburb
The most useful thing to understand about Aurora is that it runs its own water and wastewater utility. It is not on the Denver system, its rules are its own, and the answers on this page do not transfer across the city line in either direction. Aurora also spans three counties, which affects a range of non-utility questions but does not change who your water and sewer provider is.
That independence is the reason the free video review exists here and not next door. It is a policy choice by one utility. When you call anybody about an Aurora job, including us, the first useful fact is simply whether the property is an Aurora Water customer, because that determines which rulebook and which phone numbers apply before anything else is discussed.
For the neighbouring markets we have written up in detail, our Denver, Arvada and Littleton pages each cover a different set of local rules, and the statewide picture is on our Colorado plumbing page. The complete list of areas is on the locations index.
Aurora Plumbing Questions, Answered From What the City Publishes
Every answer below traces to a City of Aurora or Aurora Water page read in August 2026. Where the city does not publish a figure, neither do we.
Aurora Water publishes it as a free service to Aurora residents. If you are experiencing backups or have questions or concerns about your lateral or private service main line, you can submit video footage of your pipe to the city. A wastewater staff member reviews the video and consults on suggestions, next steps and potential resolutions, and the city describes it explicitly as a second opinion for homeowners uncertain about repairs or maintenance. The footage can come from any plumber or vendor and is usually supplied as a link or an email attachment you can forward on.
You are, and further out than in most cities. Aurora states that all pipes within your home, including the main lateral line, are your responsibility, and that Aurora Water maintains only the city main lines in the public right of way. The published owner responsibilities are the service line from the sewer tap to the address, all internal plumbing, the connection to the city main including the tee or saddle, any associated street or property damage caused by work on your line or tap, and locating the service line and tap.
No, and the city addresses this head on. It names as one of the most common misconceptions about wastewater infrastructure the belief that the utility provider will make the repairs and pay the associated damages, and states that it is the property owner’s responsibility to maintain and repair the sanitary sewer service line from the building to the city’s mains, as well as any resulting damages.
The city names two categories. Blockage or backup, commonly caused by tree roots, fats, oils and grease, baby wipes and other paper products. And infiltration, meaning cracks in the pipe that allow groundwater into the system. The distinction matters because the first is often a cleaning job while the second is structural, and no amount of rodding resolves a cracked pipe. That is exactly the question a camera survey exists to settle.
The city describes the signature. Where the main lateral sags, leaks or ruptures you may see a backup of water at the lowest level of the house, such as a floor drain, a lower-level shower, a tub or a toilet. Water appearing at the lowest fixture while higher fixtures behave normally points down the line rather than at a single trap. A blockage confined to one area of the house is more likely a localised clog.
A different number from the daytime one. Aurora Water separates its contacts: during business hours, 7:30am to 5pm Monday to Friday excluding holidays, billing, customer service, emergencies and water reconnects run through one line. After hours, from 5pm to 7am on weekdays plus weekends and holidays, emergencies and water reconnects run through another. Payment by phone and online is available around the clock, but that is not the emergency route.
No. Aurora runs its own water and wastewater utility, which is why the rules, the phone numbers, the lead service line programme and the free video review service on this page are specific to Aurora and do not carry across the city line. The first thing worth confirming about any property here is simply whether it is an Aurora Water customer, because that determines which rulebook applies.
The city’s wastewater division maintains more than 1,200 miles of sanitary sewer lines and pipes. Each year it cleans 662 miles, stated by the city as 3.5 million feet, and CCTV inspects 95 miles, or 500,000 feet. Sanitary sewage and stormwater are managed through separate systems in Aurora rather than a combined one, which is useful diagnostically: a sanitary backup that worsens in wet weather points toward infiltration rather than toward system capacity.
Ask for the Footage. Then Ask the City.
Nowhere else we have written about can you take a contractor’s camera survey, forward it to the utility that owns the main, and get an independent read on it at no cost. If you are being quoted for buried work in Aurora, that is the sequence.
Where every figure came from, and what we would not state
The free video review service and its description as a second opinion, the note that footage comes from a plumber or other vendor as a link or attachment, the 1,200 miles of sanitary sewer, the 662 miles and 3.5 million feet cleaned annually, the 95 miles and 500,000 feet inspected by CCTV, the separation of sanitary and storm systems, the full ownership list including the tee or saddle and the associated street and property damage, the named misconception, the two failure categories and the lowest-fixture backup signature are all from the City of Aurora wastewater page, read in August 2026.
The business-hours and after-hours contact split, the twenty-four hour payment options, and the list of homeowner resources covering advanced metering, backflow prevention, service line insurance information, troubleshooting and repairs, and lawn and irrigation permits are from the city’s homeowner services and information page. The existence of a dedicated hotline for verifying whether a caller is genuinely with the programme is from the city’s lead service line replacement programme page.
We refused several things. No water or sewer rate, tap fee, permit fee or repair price is stated anywhere above. No lead, copper or contaminant result is quoted, because the pages we read describe the replacement programme and its verification hotline rather than publishing a result. No hardness figure is given for Aurora, because we did not find the city publishing one on the pages read, and we are not going to import a regional figure and present it as this utility’s. No frost depth is stated here, because the figure we hold is for a different Colorado city and a design figure does not travel across a municipal boundary just because the cities are adjacent.
One reasoning note. The city publishes what a property owner is responsible for as an explicit list of maintenance and repair obligations, not as a boundary description, so we have treated it as an assignment. Where a document only defines where something starts and stops without saying who maintains it, we do not convert one into the other. That distinction is why the tee and saddle sentence is stated so plainly above: the city assigned it, in those words.
No office, address, crew, response time, guarantee or coverage claim of ours is stated for Aurora. The third-party firm named above is cited only as evidence of a genuine local market, was checked against its own published description, and is not a partner, affiliate or endorsement. Programme availability, contact numbers, hours and responsibilities change. Confirm current requirements with Aurora Water before relying on anything here.