Roots In Your Sewer Line, Save your Money with Maintenance

Roots in your sewer line can be a nightmare.  Especially if you have a plumber that is more interested in selling a repair as opposed to providing you with the best options.  In Southern California where I am located, a typical sewer line repair in dirt, not under concrete and at a depth of about 3 to 4 feet is typically about 3,000-4,000 dollars.  Depending on the pipe condition, that repair may not be necessary.  As long as the pipe is still intact, that problem spot can many times, be maintained with a regular cleaning. The important thing is a proper diagnosis, usually with a camera, to pinpoint the trouble spot and provide you with a plan to properly maintain that section of pipe.  Running a standard cable in the line, which most people opt for because it is the cheapest, is really not the best thing.  It tends to rip a hole in the roots but often leaves substantial amounts of roots in the line.  This gives the roots a head start at coming back.  And they will be back.  How often do you mow your lawn or trim your bushes in the yard.  What if you didn't trim the bushes for a year.  Now you get the idea.  Sewer roots need to be maintained. Hydro jetting is a much more effective way of removing roots.  Many times it is so effective that you can no longer see any evidence of roots in the sewer line after it has been hydro jetted. Combining this with a regular treatment of foaming root killer will usually save the property owner thousands of dollars and may allow you to skip that expensive repair indefinitely. Check out the following link.  The video will give you an idea of the power and effectiveness of hydro jetting.  Superjet Hydro Jetting
Call us if we can be of any help.
Mark   Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning.
Sewer Roots

Sewer roots, Hydro Jet Maintenance or CIPP Repair?

 I Just recently had a long conversation, actually  multiple conversations with a prospective customer and he was torn between lining his sewer pipe to prevent root intrusion or whether he should possibly just maintain it by hydro jetting it maybe once a year or so.   There's no set answer. What you have to look for at first is the condition of the pipe to determine if it's a candidate for regular maintenance. If you have multiple cracks within a given section of the pipe it's probably going to be less likely a candidate for maintenance.  Multiple cracks allow individual pieces of the pipe to move and you don't want that.  Note that I chose my words carefully,  I said less likely.  Just because it has multiple cracks doesn't mean that it can't be maintained, each situation needs to be looked at individually with a high quality camera inspection. Now for example if you have root intrusion at a joint and that joint is basically intact, then you can consider it a better candidate for maintaining it with hydro jetting as opposed to spending much more money to line it with a CIPP liner system. You just need to do the math and decide which is a better alternative for you. In this instance the customer was looking at an estimate in the neighborhood of $6000  to line 30 feet of sewer pipe. His root intrusion appeared to be solely at the joints  with the rest of the pipe looking just fine. You could jet that pipe 15 times before you'd spend $6000. It really comes down to an honest evaluation as opposed to a scare tactic from someone who's looking to sell a liner. The following video shows a segment of pipe that definitely needed to be lined.
https://youtu.be/9eFHsAPUprE
If you're in Southern California, call us for an honest evaluation. We're Superjet sewer and drain cleaning were the ones that know what we're doing.

"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

Grand Theft Plumbing problems Sewer and Drain Style

     Ok, another great story with a happy ending. A good customer called us to inspect a line that they were having repeat problems on.  It was a commercial property with quite a few tennants including a mix of food and administrative businesses and my customer, a property management company, suspected that the restaurants were causing the problems with their contribution of grease to the line.  We were going to video document who or what was causing the problem so that appropriate measures could be taken.
     We had the inspection scheduled for later in the week and then we got a frantic phone call from the property manager that the line was backed up again, it had just been cleared by a rooter company a week or so earlier, and he was very concerened that the overflow in the parking lot might end up in a large fine with the city. From my experience, Cerritos, Ca  commonly levies fines in the neighborhood of $10,000 for any sewage outflow that makes it into a storm drain.
     I was concerned that I couldn't get to him fast enough, we were about an hour and a half out.   With the threat of a $10,000 fine looming I told him to just have his rooter guy pop the line back open to stop the overflow.   I'll hydro jet the line and inspect as soon as I can get there.
     Well guess what, the rooter guy, a big franchise operation,  "couldn't get the line open with a mainline cable."  It happens now and then.  "He insisted that they needed to hydro jet the line themselves in order to open the line." So the property manager agreed.  Normally we do the hydro jetting and diagnosis for him for a reason.  We are very good at what we do.  Check out this link for stories from the same customer.Same customer another great story from Superjetdrains
     Needless to say I wasn't too excited about the phone call telling me that the rooter guy got the hydro jetting work but it happens, and my primary concern was for my customer to avoid a monster fine.  I lost the job but my customer was taken care of. 
     I'll say he was taken care of, they charged him $1,200.00 to hydro jet the line.  That is three times what we charge.  Alot of these companies pull that scam.  They know they have you over a barrel at that point and they just throw out a number crazy as it is. It's pure profit for everybody, everyone is making their percentange.
     Guess what happened next....your going to love this.  So a week goes by and I talked to my client and told him that I can probably still do the video inspection on the line to determine who is contributing to the grease.  I told him that chances are good that the rooter company probably did a quick jetting job and that there is still probably some grease in the line to show who is causing the problem.  So he sends us out to document it on video.
     We get there and there are only three clean/outs that could have been used to clear the line covering a distance of maybe 180 feet total.  We started the video at the upper end c/o  and we had a hell of a time just getting a picture.  Every time we put the camera in the hole it was absolutely covered in grease and we had to pull it out, wipe it off and go again.  We did this about 4 or 5 times before we were able to see anything.  After we were actually able to see the pipe wall itself  it was clearly evident that this stretch of pipe, about 80 feet, had'nt been touched by a hydro jetter.  The pipe walls were coated with a very thick layer of white grease almost like cake frosting and it was absolutely plain that a hydro jetting nozzle had not passed through this pipe.  It would have left large and unmistakeable score marks in the grease.  Just like walking in the snow.  If someone has passed by, your going to know it.  What was also odd was that the entire pipe run for the complex could have been serviced, all the way to the mainline vault, from this one clean/out.  There was no reason to use another c/o.  If you hit this one, you would get the blockage and clean the entire line at the same time.
     I gave them the benefit of the doubt and inspected the remaining two clean/outs.  Both of the remaining clean/outs showed the pipe walls covered with thick grease and again absolutely no sign of having been serviced by a hydro jetter.  Absolutely no doubt about it.  Not only that but at the turn just before the third c/o there was a huge chunk of grease coming off the pipe wall and about to drop.  I called my client and informed him that this was critical and needed to be serviced ASAP.  It could back up at any moment.  He contacted the rooter company to make good on what they were supposed to have done. 
     In the time that they took to get back to him, you guessed it, the line backed up again. This time Superjet hydro jetted the line completely and thoroughly and provided a wonderful before and after video.  It was just like night and day.

Last I heard my client was raking the other guys over the coals.  I hope so.  It looks like grand theft to me. Grand Theft California penal code

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