How to Test Your Landscape Drains, Don't Ignore your Landscape Drains Just Because It's Not Raining

We have an amazing climate in here in Southern California that practically provides plants with year round growth.  Unfortunately out of sight usually means out of mind.  If your not seeing the water back up in your landscape drains, it's not a priority.  Don't make that mistake.  The longer roots and sediment sit in your pipe the harder it is to remove it.  Especially roots.  Roots get bigger and there will be a point where they damage your pipe to the point that cleaning is no longer an option and the only cure is to dig it up.  Unfortunately if that is under concrete, it's going to be a big expense. 

     We just serviced a client where the roots were left to the point where they had torn the pipe apart and it is under concrete.  Unfortunately the drains that this pipe serves are critical to draining the side of this person's house and preventing serious property damage.  Their only alternative at this point is to dig up concrete.

     Test your drains, it's easy.  The outflow from your property is usually at the street at a core outlet in the curb.  Starting at what you think is the closest drain to the outflow at the curb, test each drain with a hose at full volume for at least 3 to 4 minutes per drain and working back away from the street going back toward the back of your house.  Make a map of what works and what does not.  You will quickly find out what works and what does not.  This will be invaluable in figuring out where your problem lies.

Many people tell me that the drains work but they are just slow.  The water goes away in a day or so.  What they don't realize is that the drains are not working.  The pipe is empty at the start of the rain and acts as a reservoir. Also the pipe joints are usually not glued and this allows the water to seep out into the ground over time.  This gives the impression that the line is draining.  Many times it is not.  If the water is not leaving your property at the curb outlet, your lines are not draining. Go to the curb outlet and verify and is it leaving as fast as it is going in?

If the drains need cleaning, I strongly recommend hydro jetting, it is the least likely to damage your thinwall plastic drain pipe and absolutely the most effective process to remove roots and sediment.

If your in our service area, give us a call. But first look us up online to see what people say about us.

Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning, We're the ones that know what we're doing.

www.superjetdrains.com

What to be mindful of when cleaning your landscape drains.

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.

Hydro Jetting FAQS for sewer and drain cleaning

Hydro jetting is the use of water under high pressure to clean pipes clear of various types of debris. It's an amazing process that got it's start years ago in the oil fields and has found it's way into numerous different industries that need to keep their pipes operating at a high rate of efficiency.

It's extremely effective and in high demand for the simple reason that it is the only process that can actually clean a line of debris. You see when you run a cable in a line to clear a blockage,( ie. rooter a line), you are typically puching a hole in a blockage to allow flow again in the pipe. This can leave debris behind and this debris can act as a starting point for another blockage some time in the future. Now a skilled technician running a cable may be able to get close to the true pipe diameter but only if variables work in his favor. Never the less they will never be able to clean a line like a hydro jetter could. A common situation is a clean/out that is smaller than the mainline. For Example a 4 inch clean out on a 6 inch mainline. Now, if your running a cable your limited by that 4 inch access. If your running a cable, your punching a hole in the blockage because you can't get a full size tool into the line. A hydro jetting nozzle does not work that way. The high velocity streams of water that do the cleaning spread out to impact the pipe wall. On a regular basis we tackle major root intrusion problems, many with multiple intrusion points in a single sewer line and when finished, it was very difficult if not impossible to see with video inspection where the roots were making their way into the pipes because the pipes and joints were that clean. Just yesterday we were called to a school that had a large mainline backed up. Turned out it was an 8 inch. After we poked a hole in the blockage and it drained away a bit, we were able to see a huge root intrusion at the sweep into the line. With careful placement of a Warthog rotating nozzle we were able to polish this completely out and there were roots that were as big around as my thumb. At the other end 150 feet away in a vault was another monster root mass that was spreading out from the opening and holding back the flow. Again careful placement shredded this all out of the way without having to enter the vault and it was a deep one. This rate of success is par for the course and explains why hydro jetting is now an industry standard.

One big misconception is that the pipes might not be able to withstand that pressure. The pipes are not pressurized with water. When the water is in the hose it is under high pressure but when it leaves the nozzle it is no longer under pressure but it is traveling at a high speed. It's this speed of the water hitting the pipe walls that does the actual cleaning of the pipe.

There is a huge difference in the quality of work based on the machine used. Larger trailer towed machines are capable of producing high pressure, 4,000 psi at 18 gallons per minute. That high water flow volume is crucial to flushing the debris out of the line once it has been loosened from the pipe walls. Many many companies, plumbers use small cart type machines that they carry around inside their van. They produce a reasonable pressure but do not produce the high flow volume to flush the debris out of the line. A typical cart type jetter might produce 3,500 psi @ 5gallons per minute. If your working on a smaller line, 3 inches or less, it may be fine but a medium or larger line with any sort of heavy debris, your wasting your money. They'll be there all day on a job that a big machine could do in an hour or two. Be careful, they're probably charging the same rate as the big machine.
Hydro Jetting Grease
There are various reasons to use hydro jetting as opposed to running a cable in a line. The most glaring is grease. If your in a commercial application as in a restaurant, grease is a huge issue. We see it in homes as well but there it happens over a longer period of time. You can't touch that problem with a cable machine. By that I mean, you may cable a line open but it's going to be very difficult and time consuming and it will not last long. Depending on how severe the problem is, it could last a week or a day. Any restaurant manager with more than a few years in the business has figured this one out already and can probably give you an ear full.

One of the heaviest situations I have run into are some of the El Pollo Loco restaurants we service. Think about how many chickens they cook every day with three shifts a day. Now multiply that by a month and now by a year. All that grease drips down from the broiler and into the broiler floor drain. We are able to clear those lines to the extent that some of those customers are jetting once every year or year and a half. That's pretty incredible.
Hydro Jetting Roots
We've already mentioned roots but let me just say that completely cleaning the roots out of a line as opposed to punching a hole with a cable machine will allow longer intervals between services and also help to minimize the amount of damage done by the roots to the pipe itself. We are probably all familiar with that stretch of sidewalk in our neighborhood slowly buckling up over the years. Every year the concrete gets pushed up a bit more and more by the tree roots. Well the same thing is happening under the ground with respect to roots entering sewer and drain lines. If you don't keep these in check, they move the pipe more and more and can and often do cause pipes to crack and collapse. It's going to be expensive to fix and if the pipe is deep, it's going to be very expensive.
Hydro Jetting Debris
The other situation is debris. We had this job a while back where a lady was dumping her cats litter box into her toilet. This had been going on for quite some time till finally, you guessed it, the toilets didn't work anymore. Well you can't cable that type of a blockage. It's completely ineffective. All the cable does is stir the debris. We were able to actually pull a great deal of that material out of the line through the clean/out on the side of the house. Think of a badmitten bird. The little plastic skirted toy that you bat back and forth with a raquet. A hydro jetting nozzle looks similar when the water leaves the nozzle. If you go beyond the debris and slowly pull back, those fingers of high pressure water will pull the debris back with it as they scour the pipe walls. Pretty amazing result. We pulled a huge amount of cat litter out of their lines in just a couple of hours. When we left, everything was working perfectly.
Hydro jetting is more effective at longer distances.
Another neat thing about the hydro jetting process is that it is able to deliver it's full cleaning effectiveness at very great distances. Our machine carries 500 feet of hose. Many of our jobs require that or more. But what is interesting is that the nozzle delivers the same amount of pressure and cleaning quality if we are out 50 feet or 500 feet. This is in direct contrast to a cable machine. The motor on a cable machine produces a fixed amount of torque or power to rip through that clog or roots or whatever it may be. But the more cable that is run out of the machine, the less torque or power is transfered to the cutting head at the blockage. That is because the cable actually starts to absorb some of that energy. The more cable you have out, the more energy or torque is absorbed by the cable. A cable machine is also pretty much at the end of it's limit in the 150 to 200 ft range.
Doing The Impossible
Cast iron drain or sewer pipe that is fairly old tends to blister on the interior. This blistering makes the pipe very rough and it tends to catch debris, grease etc. With time, this can literally change the interior shape of the pipe with large ledges left and right of the flow channel line. These can get almost as hard as a rock. Hydro jetting is unique in that it is a process that is, in many instances, capable of returning that pipe back to a round condition and substantially smoothing out the surface. This may allow a customer to postpone pipe replacement and save them thousands of dollars. That isn't going to happen with a cable machine.