Have a sink, tub, or shower that’s slow to drain? Or that’s backed up entirely? If more than one fixture is having problems the odds are you need sewer cleaning. For most homes and businesses there’s a single sewer line that runs from the building to the city sewer main at the street. It’s not just for toilets. All drains, including most indoor floor drains, connect up to it. That includes bath tubs, showers, clothes washers, and dish washers.
Sewer Line Problems
With so much feeding into them, sewer lines are several times larger in diameter than drain pipes (4 to 6 inches versus around 1 1/2 inch), so clearing a clog requires more than the usual drain snake. In many cases diameter and length are the only difference between sewer & drain cleaning, but sewer line cleaning usually presents its own special challenges.
- Flushing a single item that shouldn’t have been flushed can cause an immediate blockage.
- Tree roots can infiltrate through the tiniest of openings seeking moisture and nutrients.
- Waste and water flows by gravity, not by pressure as in water supply pipes. That makes it easy for any edge or roughness to catch debris, which then accumulates grease, grime, and more debris faster and faster.
- Any ground shift (or installation error) from an ideal straight slope also makes it much easier for grease and grime to accumulate. Settling or other ground movements can also pulled apart or shift joints out of alignment.
- Many materials once used just didn’t stand the test of time. Clay tile is long lasting, but is more easily damaged than modern materials. Cast iron and similar materials corrode, and for a short while even pipes made of paper coated with tar were tried. If your home is relatively new it might still use an old sewer line from a previous building.
Property managers and restaurant owners are all to aware of these problems and often schedule preventive maintenance in the form of pre-emptive cleaning and/or inspections, usually about once a year.
Inspection First
With all these complicating factors it’s often best to have a sewer camera inspection prior to actual sewer cleaning. With a live video camera feed we’ll immediately know what the blockage is, where it’s located, and the general condition of the line. In-pipe cameras are specifically designed to go inside sewer lines with all the right lenses, lighting, and location measures.
Sewer Cleaning
Cabling (drain snaking) with the right size equipment is often all it takes for sewer cleaning services. An auger attachment also lets plumbers cut through tree roots and other types of blockages. But it’s difficult even for seasoned pros to remove all sludge and grease. What’s left gives the next clog a head start.
Our advanced hydro jetting sewer equipment leaves the inside of pipes as clean and smooth as when they were new. For the best in sewer and drain cleaning, it produces tiny jets tiny jets of extremely high pressure water that break through clogs and scour the inside of pipes. Those jets can even cut tree roots! That completely solves the problem and makes it much more difficult for grease, grime, and tiny particles to start accumulating again. Feel free to contact us for more information.
