Landscape Drains and Area Drains Benefit from Hydro Jetting

The primary thing to keep in my when you are trying to clear problem area drains or landscape drains is that the culprit is usually a combination of three things in varying amounts.

The first is usually dirt.  The drains usually occupy a low spot, if they were installed properly, and if the area around the drain is not protected or stabilized somehow by regulating the size of the material around the drain, you always end up with that material going into the drain, multiply that by10 - 15 years or more and you get a serious accumulation.

The second item is usually roots.  Area or landscape drains are notorious for being installed at a lower  quality standard.  The majority of pipe joints we encounter with regard to landscape drains are not glued.  The fact that they are simply press fitted together allows the joints to leak as they carry water to the outflow.  That leak over time brings roots into the line through the joint, they grow and expand and many times the roots will deform the pipe.  If  the pipe has substantial dirt in it as well, now you have a mass of dirt with roots combined.  This combination over years and years of accumulation, makes it pretty close to impossible to remove with a typical plumbers cable machine. The machine typically buries the cable into the dirt and many times it becomes stuck requiring a dig to get the cable out.  If that happens to be under concrete, it's going to be expensive.

"You can not cable dirt."  It just doesn't work.  

Imagine using an electric drill, put any bit on it that you please,  and start drilling into a 5 gallon bucket full of dirt.  What do you think is going to happen?  Nothing. Your going to move a little bit of dirt around but your certainly not going to remove the problem dirt.
Now, hit that same bucket of dirt with a firehose and what do you think is going to happen. Yes your right, no more dirt.  The volume and pressure of the water will put the dirt into suspension in the water and flow it out of the bucket.  Combine that with a rotating nozzle to cut roots and you begin to see the advantage hydro jetting has over running a cable.

The last item I would call "debris" and it usually ends up being chunks of something. I attached a couple of photographs to give you a "for instance."

The first is a very large amount of medium pebble rock that went into a customers landscape drains from around a koi pond.  Some of it is visible here but we probably pulled out 15 to 20 lbs of pebble rock that had mixed in with dirt in a low spot in the line run.  That could never have been removed with a cable machine.

Pebble rock removed from Landscape Drain with Hydro Jetting.

Grout material left in line by tile contractor after installing new backyard hardscape.

Note the large and small chunks of rocklike material removed with Hydro Jetting.

Close up of the hardened grout, note the half pipe shape clearly visible in the left rear piece.

With this type of material, the hydro jetting with high pressure water actually gets between the pipe wall and the grout and breaks it free to move.  The water flows it out of the pipe. You could never remove this material with a cable machine.

Now let's be honest, there is no magic cure.  Landscape drains are a very difficult type of problem because there are so many variables and landscape lines are generally not installed to code.  For that same exact reason, many vendors will not service area drains. 

Regardless of how effective our hydro jetting machine is, we have seen lines that could not be cleared for a number of reasons.  Sometimes the pipes are no longer round from being crushed by a careless installer or deformed by root intrusion, or the layout and the use of  T fittings instead of a swept turn will prevent you from getting through.  Sometimes the roots are so heavy from so many years of neglect that it just isn't feasible to hydro jet and your better off replacing the line if the above ground hardscape allows it.

With all things being equal, Hydro jetting is by far a much more effective process at removing a variety of different types of debris.

Large root mass quickly chewed up by the warthog nozzle.  Note the size of the roots as compared to the 1/2 inch I/D of the green hose.

Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning.

www.Superjetdrains.com

Superjet Hydro jetting demonstration video

 

El Nino is coming, don't fail to prepare.

Sewer Gas Smoke Test Saves the Day for Restaurant

We were called out to a family pizza restaurant in Orange County Ca by the owner of the restaurant.  They had been suffering from sewer gas issues for years and they were losing business and customers because of it. They had been working with the landlord who had been very helpful and supportive in the effort to solve the problem.  The landlord had multiple plumbers over the years each take a crack at it. Some performing smoke tests, some just recommending certain repairs.  Each one declaring the problem was fixed only to later find out that the problem persisted.  The landlord even hired a "night watchman" to sit in the property overnight for a period of months to verify if indeed the smell was still present.  He did indeed verify just that.

They even had someone come out from some official air quality management agency to take air samples.  Which is funny because typically sewer gas issues are something that comes and goes.  It's not going to be there all the time. There are many variables that will affect whether the smell is present at any one point in time.  So the odds are against you of doing any sort of a one time test and verifying the presence of sewer gas.

I'll give you a for instance. We had an architect who's office complained of sewer gas only at certain times of the year.  Without a doubt, it would go away for months at a time and then all of a sudden it was back with a vengence.  Finally the city was threatening to red tag the building so we were called in and we performed a smoke test.  We located  a cast iron sewer stack behind a toilet hidden in a wall that was split wide open for about 4 feet or more.  Well it was obvious that the hole in the pipe had been like that for years but still the smell would go away for months at a time.  The access point for the sewer gas was always there yet the gas was not always present.  That is quite common and has a lot to do with prevailing wind, doors and windows left open and so on.

Back to Orange County, multiple smoke tests had already been performed and some small leaks found and fixed.  Now the consensus was that it was the adjacent nail salon that was responsible for the leak possibly because there was a shared attic and no solid demising wall.  So we were in essence testing the nail salon looking for a source of sewer gas.  We blew smoke in from the nail salon for an extended period of time without any sign of smoke showing in that business.  Then after approximately a 15 to 20 minute period of time, the pizza restaurant quickly filled with smoke.  Still no smoke showed in the Nail Salon.

As it turned out, there was a shared enclosed void that had an opening above the water heater in the pizza restaurant.  The leak was far away to be sure at the other end of the void and it took time for the void to fill with smoke before it would exit the opening.

There was likely a cut off vent stack hiding at the far end of the void. It was up to the property owner to chase it down at this point.
After years and years of sewer gas issues with I don't know how many contractors and agencies involved, we solved the issue in just a couple of hours.

Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning, we're the ones that know what we are doing.
www.Superjetdrains.com

"I'm still shopping around." Searching for the cheapest price on hydro-jetting.

I can't tell you how many times as a vendor I hear, "I'm still shopping around, I'll call you back."  It's frustrating as a quality vendor because I know that in the end their sole consideration is price.  They are assuming that everything else is equal.  They assume that Hydro jetting is the same from one vendor to the next and nothing could be further from the truth.  I try and educate people as to the differences to look for but some people don't want to hear it, they just want the lowest price.

Ok, so when people tell me "this guy will hydro-jet  for $250 or $200"  I tell them, "use him, or better yet, go to craigslist and put a want ad for hydro-jetting and put a price of $150 or $100."  Without a doubt you will find someone but it becomes obvious to them at that point that maybe going the cheapest rout isn't the best idea.

Let me give you a "for instance".  When I was a young man I had a plumbing water leak in my newly purchased home.  I had a home warranty with one of the national home warranty vendors so I let them take care of it instead of doing the work myself.  Well if your not aware of how the home warranty business works, I'll tell you.  They send out a contractor that they have struck a deal with and they pay that contractor a very small per visit fee, maybe only $50 dollars or so and the contractor picks up a small check from the homeowner as a co-pay as it were. So the combination of the two payments still adds up to a very small service call fee for the vendor supplying the work.  

Well what happens is that you end up with a lower quality of service provider that is willing to work that cheaply.

In my case,  when the "plumber" arrived, it was obvious that this man had spent more than a little time in jail.  He was covered with jail house tattoos and he was not someone I wanted around my young wife and children. I would have gladly spent an extra $100 just to keep that man out of my house.  So you see, everything isn't equal.

The best thing to do is research. The internet is an amazing tool, use it to your advantage.  Just a little bit of time online will give you a pretty good idea of who is competent and who is not, of who can be trusted and who can not. Be wary of the one stop shop websites that say they will provide you with a great contractor.  Again, use the internet for reviews of each specific service provider by name.

We have an amazing amount of information online at our website that tells you what to ask to allow you to compare one hydro jetting vendor to the next.  www.superjetdrains.com

And by the way, we hold a DOD, ( department of defense ) background check and clearance for work on military installations.

Mark Gervase, President

Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning

Building Hydro Jetted Back From the Dead with Warthog nozzles

We were called out to a growing emergency at a school in a district that we regularly provide service to.
There was a contractor there working on site that was in the process of "mud jacking" the foundation.  It's a process where they forcefully pump a fluid concrete like material under the foundation to raise a portion of the building that is sagging or settling.

In the middle of this process, some of the toilets in the administration side of the building stopped working.  Well things quickly snowballed after that point. We hydro jetted one inside toilet line to a stop point and then started locating with a camera to map things out.  Initially maintenance and I were not sure that this was all related yet but we were suspicious.  After a little more legwork and plotting the runs which included some overhead runs in the sub basement area, we determined that somehow the concrete mud had found it's way into the sewer line and the pressure behind the pumping of the material was so great that the concrete had made it's way into about 200 feet of 2", 3" and 4" pipe going both upstream to the 2nd floor and downstream about 100 feet to the mainline tie in.

It quickly turned into a military type of operation with all available maintenance personnel directed over to our site to do whatever could be done to expedite a fix.

We all had a serious conversation with the contractor who was doing the mud jacking about the feasibility of hydro jetting this material out  of the pipe.  It had already hardened solid and was becoming harder as more time passed.
We all knew that if it couldn't be hydro jetted out of the lines, the only alternative would be to dig up the pipes and break open the walls.  Your talking about 200 feet of pipe running all over this building.

We ran a quick test on a section of pipe and determined that with a rotary nozzle it would be slow going but we could chew up and move the material.  The maintenance crew excavated a spot outside that I had marked with camera to crack open the mainline so we could attack it from two different directions and pull the material back to a pit to drop it out of the line.

We immediately started on what turned out to be three long days running into night of messy and hard work but we pulled it off.  We pulled off an absolute miracle.  We cleared all of the lines and mind you the lines were packed solid, absolutely solid and hardened with that concrete.

We brought that building back from the dead and saved that contractor's insurance agency well over a hundred grand.  You know that contractor never did send me a thank you note.

The only way I was able to clear those lines was by using the best rotating nozzles that money could buy.  We used Stoneage Warthog nozzles.

So when a jetting contractor tells you " We use warthog rotary nozzles", you will have an appreciation of the capability that brings to the job.

"Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning, were the ones that know what were doing."

Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning LLC
www.superjetdrains.com

This photograph shows a horizontal run in the elevator access way with a maintenance technician's hand on it. Notice the riser going up that is absolutely solid with material.  At this stage we have already hydro jetted the horizontal clear of debris.