Area and Landscape drain cleaning do's and don'ts

Ok, for those of you that aren't aware of it, there is a huge difference between standard plumbing drains and pipes that you find inside a building and the area or landscape drains that you typically find on the exterior. First of all, when your in the home improvement store, take a look at the plastic pipe that is used for exterior area drains. It is much thinner and more flexible than what you will find designed for code acceptable plumbing installations. Also you need to look at the fittings that are used in the area / landscape drains. You will find that hard ninety degree turn fittings are common. These two charectaristics are the kiss of death and make it very difficult to run a cable machine in an area drain line without punching a hole in the pipe. Its a catch 22, if you run a smaller machine that won't punch a hole, it's not big or powerful enough to do any good with the roots. If you run the monster machine, your going to punch right through the back of the thinner plastic on the ninety degree turn fitting and probably bury the cable into the dirt. We see this all the time. We ( SuperJet Sewer and Drain Cleaning ) are always getting called out to try and fix the mess someone else created. If the cable gets buried in the dirt your most likely not going to able to retrieve it without digging up the problem area and if that's under concrete it's going to be expensive.
Another wonderful thing I have noticed is that many of the exterior drain installers don't even use glue to put the pipe joints together. It's just a tight pressure fit. It's crazy. Small amounts of water leak through these joints and it is a dinner bell for roots. As soon as roots locate a source of water, a massive invasion is sure to follow. If your designing a landscape drainage system on a new house, make sure the plumber uses standard plumbing fixtures and pipe and this is the most important part; make sure they design the layout so that it can be cleaned. By that I mean that A leads to B and B leads to C and so on.
We got called out to a professional building that had an open air interior courtyard that was backed up and flooded from days of rain with no end to the weather. Roto Rooter had been out there for hours before us and wasnt able to diagnose the layout and told the owners that it would probably take a day more with a camera to figure things out. They couldn't determine which way the pipes were running so they could not find the outflow to attack the blockage. No wonder. We hydro jetted and quickly determined that one entire side of the courtyard ran from one side to the other. So when we went to side A and ran the line, the nozzle came up out of the ground at the other end at point B. When we went to B and ran the hose it came back up out of the ground at the other end back at A. What the contractor had done was run one long pipe run with a "T" fitting in the middle of the run for the outflow to drain the run. Absolutely crazy, you can't clean the line. A cable or a hydro jetting nozzle just runs past the outflow point because the pipe run isn't directing the machinery toward the outflow. It took a careful camera inspection and alot of clear flushing water to find the outflow point. The whole place was just more and more of the same. It was absolutely a nightmare and the layout was put into the ground without a chance in hell of anyone ever being able to clean it without extroidinary measures.
This brings me to my next point. We see this all the time as well. Pipe runs where the outflow from the run comes off in a T and no chance of directing line cleaning equipment into the outflow to open blockages. Take a look at a "T" area drain fitting at the home improvement store and you'll have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. If your installing a drain system, don't let your contractor do this to you.
The next thing to keep in mind is that the majority of the time the area drains are impacted with roots and dirt. Dirt is heavy and when it's wet it's like concrete. Run a cable into this and more often than not you will get stuck big time. Get ready to dig. A much better alternative is to Hydro Jet the debris out of the line. Hydro Jetting uses high pressure water at very high volumes to shred the vegetation and put all the dirt up into suspension in the water allowing it to be flushed out of the line. SuperJet uses full size jetters that achieve high pressure with high volume of water flow. The high volume is critical to flushing the debris out once it has been loosened. Alot of companies will say they have jetters and they do jetting and on and on. Be sharp and ask questions. You want a full size machine ie. 4,000 psi at 18 gallons per minute. The smaller cart type jetters don't produce the volume of flow needed to flush the heavy debris out of the pipe. And your better off with a company that specializes in drain cleaning with a hydro jetter. If it's all you do day in and day out, you get very good at it.
The other thing to keep in mind is that high pressure water will not harm your plastic pipes.
Its a pretty amazing process. Don't forget to check out our video on our website. We shred a chicken in 43 seconds flat. http://www.superjetdrains.com/ and if your in Southern California, give us a call.
Superjet Hydro Jetting Sewer and Drain Cleaning, were the ones that know what were doing.