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

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.

Superjet sewer and drain cleaning Testimonial

Ok, long story but a good one. Big sewer line overflow at a shopping center in Cerritos. The overflow makes it into the storm drains and the city has levied a $ 10,000.00 fine against those responsible. My client, client B, a property management co. gets involved in this mess because they share a portion of that shopping center with other owners.
The overflow actually happens on client A's corner of the property but his plumber, a big operation with quite a few trucks, tells him that the whole complex is tied together and the sewer line runs all the way around in a big horseshoe shape and into the line that overflowed. So it would be a shared responsibility.

Another huge problem is that the plumber for client "A" states that the main outgoing line is cast iron and completely falling apart and needs to be fixed immediately because the entire complex drains through it. The run was about 150 feet and I think the estimate was $17,000 to $20,000 and of course it needed to happen immediately as fast as possible.

Prior to laying out all this cash for fines and repairs, we were called in to diagnose the situation and map out the property by our client "B"
A quick check of a few clean/outs on the upper portion of the property showed that they had not even been opened in years. If they had, it would have been obvious to anyone that the sewer line did not run all in the same direction. The upper portion ran a completely different direction to a different connection on a different street. The direction of the sweep in the clean/out made this obvious. We double checked other runs by running a camera, locating and marking the runs above ground. Clearly 1/2 of the complex had no connection with the other at all.

Additional inspection showed that in the middle portion of the complex there were actually 2 side by side but separate sewer runs. They ran parallel to a point just before they ran together and then into the county sewer line. The lines became common just 50 feet before the sewer main connection.

This meant that the overflow was documented to be on one specfic line tied to one specific client, client "A".

We also inspected client "A"s sewer line and discovered that it was so heavily impacted with grease that it was impossible to make a determination of the pipe condition. We were asked by our client to hydro jet the line. When we hydro-jetted and then camera inspected the line, we discovered that the line was made of clay not cast iron and it was in perfect condtion mechanically. There was absolutely no need whatsoever for any repair.

Client "A" who ended up paying the full fine by himself is now our client. We saved him $17,000 + in repairs and we regularly hydro jet his lines to keep them free and clear of grease.
Client "B" we saved the shared cost of the $10,000 fine. They were happy.


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

A Superjet hydro jetting restaurant sewer line testimonial

Ok, so we've been hydro-jetting this restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga for two or three years at least, every 4 to 6 months or so. They have had zero problems since our service started. Well, last service we got stuck in the line big time. We had to really work at it but we did managed to get our hose back out. Mind you the owner is sitting there watching this whole thing happen. We ran a camera and we could see a large hole in the pipe at a turn area. I showed the owner but maybe he didn't understand what he was looking at. I gave him all the specs and marked everything out on the ground where and how deep the problem was because he said his landlord would take care of the dig and the repair.
So 4 or 6 months later they call us back to schedule another service. I asked him about the repair. He said "There was no repair, the landlords plumber came out and ran a camera. That plumber told them that there is nothing wrong with the pipe."
Things got a little weird fast. I said I can't hydro-jet the line. I know you have broken pipe. He assured me, "no the landlords plumber says it's not broken." I offered to hydro-jet if they guaranteed us a deposit for the hose if we got stuck. I thought that was reasonable based on the fact that I knew what was coming. Well he got pretty upset with us at that and told us he wasn't comfortable using us anymore.
Ok, so what can I do, some idiot tells him there is no problem and I know that If I hydro-jet the line there is an almost certainty that we will get stuck and he will have an instant emergency dig on his hands causing the immediate shutdown of his restaurant. We were fired and we've lost business because of some idiot "plumber".
So this is the fun part, guess what happens.
6 months or so goes by and we get a phone call from the restaurant owner. He wants to schedule another hydro jetting. It seems that the landlords plumber took over the hydro jetting for the restaurant after we were let go and you guessed it, he got stuck in the exact spot we had marked for broken pipe causing an emergency dig to repair the problem. We must have looked like psychics. It was nice to get the account back but it was priceless to hear the story from the owner himself.
"Superjet Sewer and Drain Cleaning, were the ones who know what we're doing."

Just another day of drain cleaning and a testimonial

We were recently called by a homeowner that had root intrusion and pipe issues. He was having regular backups and had called a plumber out. That plumber cabled the line and then ran a camera. He found multiple points of root intrusion into the line and immediately went into a hard sell on a new liner for the pipe. It's advantageous to install a liner usually but not always necessary. Sometimes it's more economical to clean the line on a regular basis and leave it at that.
Well, clearly the homeowner picked up on the hard sell and wasn't comfortable or interested. The plumber was more interested in selling a liner than in fixing the mans problem. Well, when it became clear that he wasn't going to sell a liner to the homeowner, the plumber was gone. The homeowner had found us online and seen our video demonstration showing how we could completely clear a line of roots.
When we arrived we immediately ran a camera to diagnose the situation. I was really surprised that the prior plumber hadn't taken the time to mark a few things out when he ran his own camera. He charged for a camera yet did very little to give the homeowner the information that the camera provided. Nothing had been marked or located. We had to start from scratch. We marked all the pipe runs, direction changes and root intrusion spots. We used the sewer camera to precisely place the cutting sewer nozzle right on top of the root masses and completely removed the roots. The prior plumber had in essence just punched a hole through the root masses with his cable machine and left a great deal of roots still in the line.
The way it stands, the homeowner can hydro jet once a year for the next 14 years before he would have spent the amount equal to a liner installation. Every situation is a little different. But you don't always have to spend the big bucks.

The following is the homeowners email to us regarding our service:

Name: Frank Robinson
Email: umpxxxxxxxxx
Phone: 949-495-xxxx
Services Required: Hydrojetting
Comments: I had my home sewer lines Hydro Jetted by this Company on Apr 20,2010 & have nothing but praise for the Company,the service provided & in particular Mark who did the work.The professioal way that the work was conducted & the willingness to educate me @ each step was out standing.I would highly recommend these people for any work you may have & plan on having them do any future work that I might require,Kuddos to Mark & thank you.

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.

When to Hydro Jet or How to not get swindled on your sewer repair

We just finished a call for a local pair of clients. Two houses shared a common lateral sewer pipe run to the city mainline sewer in the city of Escondido, Ca. We were called to provide a bid on a sewer pipe liner to repair a seriously deteriorated pipe. The whole problem started with a back up as you would expect. The previous plumber had shot and provided a DVD to the homeowners of the problem pipe run. He told them that the pipe was seriously deteriorated and that the bottom was rotted out. I took a look at his video hoping to be able to use it to provide an accurate bid and save me the trouble of running my own camera. Well I was a bit surprised. I looked at the video and it showed that the pipe was full of heavy debris and that the pipe walls were heavily encrusted with scale and grease build up. It was no wonder that they were having backup issues. It was really ugly. The pipe was probably 50% to 60% blocked up with sludgy debris and large grease and pipe scale deposits. All a cable machine could ever hope to do would be to poke a temporary hole in a blockage. Not only that but because of the large amount of debris in the pipe, it was impossible to make any kind of an accurate determination of the condition of the pipe wall itself. It was a joke, the previous plumber is describing rotted out pipe to the customer and there was nothing on the video that backed that up. I can see how a customer doesn't understand that because he isn't used to looking at a pipe video, especially one that has a tremendous amount of debris in the pipe. I'm hoping to post the before and after videos on our website in future. http://www.superjetdrains.com/

I had a long talk with the two customers in front of the computer monitor as we watched the video and told them that my concerns were that the cost of a liner wasn't justified yet. A CCIP liner for the distance involved would be in the neighborhood of $4,000. I recommended a hydro jetting of the line to clean all the debris out and possibly remove a great deal of the pipe scale and blistering. It was an easy sell because the first step in installing a liner would be to hydro jett the line in preparation for the lining. I told them that after a careful cleaning, we would have a much better idea of what is actually going on. Based on what I saw on the video, there was a good chance that we would correct their problem with the jetting alone. It was $700 for the hydro jetting vs. $4,000 minimum for a sewer liner install. Well we hydro jetted carefully and thoroughly. We would hydro jet then camera then hydro jet and then camera again. We did this about 4 times before we were done. It was absolutely amazing the difference in the pipe. We completely cleaned out all the debris and were able to make the pipe walls round again removing the bulk of the heavy buildup of grease and pipe scale. The pipe went from about 40% to 95+%. The final video also revealed that there weren't any holes in the cast iron pipe at all and that there was a low spot or belly in the line which was clearly a repair that had been done in the street most likely by the city. This was all clearly visible on the video since the line had been hydro jetted.

If your plumber isn't able to clearly show you the actual physical problem on the video screen, be careful. It never hurts to get a second opinion and always be leery of anyone that says "you have to do this now!"

Never Never Never sign a lease or buy a building without a sewer inspection.

I can't tell you how many customers I have that are just sick. They hold leases on their restaurants or buildings and they come to find out that they have major sewer or drain line problems that have clearly been there prior to their move in. Unfortunately most commercial leases that I am aware of make the tenant responsible for all the drains and sewer lines within the building up to the mainline tie in outside of the building. I have a sweet lady, we'll call her Edith. She has been in this restaurant space for 6 or 7 years and she has constantly had to fight various drain problems. We have smoke tested her place several times on different occassions because of very strong sewer gas leaks within the building. We found degraded vent pipes in the walls and in the drop ceiling. These sections of degraded pipe allowed sewer gas to enter the building and it was affecting her business in a big way. We find and fix her problems when they pop up but there is a cost. The cost of the test, sometimes the walls have to be opened then repaired and then there is the business lost. That's just the vent pipes.
She also has regular sewer line backup issues because of degraded cast iron lines. Some lines are old and very rough. Sometimes this can be helped a bit with hydro jetting. Hydro Jetting with a large powerful machine can smooth out this rough pipe to some extent but if the pipe is getting thin with age or worse yet has holes in it, there isn't alot you can do short of major repair. The repair costs for what Edith is facing are easily in the ballpark of $6,000 plus. All this falls on her because of the way the lease is written. Take a look at the following link that shows a video of a seriously cracked sewer pipe that runs just under the corner of an apartment building.
http://www.superjetdrains.com/videos.php
We were able to line it with a cured in place pipe liner. If we had to excavate things would have been very expensive.
I would strongly recommend to anyone who is considering buying any sort of a building or leasing a property that they perform a camera inspection of the sewer and accessible drain lines. I would suggest a sewer and drain expert or specialist as opposed to just a run of the mill plumber. The specialist is going to have a much better understanding of what there looking at because it's all they do. If your in Southern California, give us a call. SuperJet Sewer and Drain Cleaing. SuperJetDrains.com It is what we do.
A visual inspection will quickly locate problems like a severe belly or low spot in a line that acts as a collection spot for debris. These are very often the cause of repeated backups. These cant be fixed short of digging it up and repairing it. ( We just did a diagnosis inspection of a beautiful house worth over a million dollars with a wide open floor plan and a long span across the house covered in beautiful stonework. The sewer line runs across the house under this same stonework and is plauged with multiple low spots or bellies in the line that regularly cause backups. The only way to fix this is to dig it up and regrade the pipe run. His only other option is to hire us on a regular basis to do a preventative maintenance with Hydro Jetting the sewer line.)
The other thing that comes to mind is that now many cities are making the homeowner responsible for the entire sewer lateral that runs from their house all the way to the cites mainline tie in point in the street. This is serious stuff. If you have a problem in that run after it hits the street, the cost to repair can be huge. A common number for a repair in the street with all it's additional issues, permits, certifications and costs can go $30,000+ very quickly. Think about that for a minute. How many houses or properties have you bought and did you ever do a sewer inspection?
One last thought, I do this for a living. About 50% of the time when we run a camera to inspect a line for whatever reason, we find a problem.