When drains get backed up and clogged, they can pose a big inconvenience to homeowners and business owners alike in Lakeland, Plant City, Winter Haven, and nearby central Florida areas. Sewer backups, flooded rooms, floors - the list of side effects goes on and on.
One way to avoid these drain backups is to keep up with required sewer maintenance practices. A practice that should be included in that is water jetting, or hydrojetting.
If you are already dealing with the aftermath, sewer backup repair comes first and jetting comes after. And if the line is backing up on nights and weekends, we run emergency plumbing calls around the clock.
What Is Water Jetting?
Water jetting is the process of spraying water at a high pressure into pipes to break up clogs and build up. At high enough pressures, water can actually slice through metals such as aluminum and steel. For plumbing purposes, though, that high level of pressure is not needed.
This pressurized water travels through pipes and can be controlled with attachments that help clean off the blockage, restoring pipes to almost-new conditions. When a qualified plumber performs the hydrojetting, or water jetting, the stream of water can be aimed directly at the blockage to get it out of the pipes.
Materials that water jetting can remove include:
- Mud
- Fat
- Grease
- Oil
- Hair
- Soap
- Sand
- Roots
- Mineral buildup
- And more!
Using water jetting gets all of the buildup out of your pipes, whereas when a plumbing snake is used, it doesn’t get everything completely out. A cable punches a hole through the middle of the blockage. Jetting scours the pipe wall, which is why a line that keeps clogging every few months after a snaking usually stops after it is jetted. Grease, soap scum, and hair packed into the trap arm are the usual residue.
Chemicals are not a substitute for either method. They sit in the pipe and eat at it, which is why store bought drain cleaners are a bad idea.
Water jetting can also be used to fix issues with tree roots growing into your pipes.
Roots are the most common reason an older central Florida sewer line goes from occasional slow drains to a full stoppage, and they are near the top of the warning signs of a sewer line problem. When several fixtures act up at once, the problem is the main, and our guide to clearing the main drain line explains what that looks like. Water rising in the tub when you flush is the same signal, described in what it means when water backs up into the bathtub.
What Is the Hydrojetting Process Like?
An experienced plumber such as True Plumbers & AC will come to your home and insert a hose that is attached to a tank of water into your plumbing system. Depending on how old the pipes are, the plumber will have to adjust the water pressure to ensure that no damage is done to the pipes during this process.
Hydrojetting happens from the ground up - meaning that the water streams travel upward through the pipes to remove the buildup, and then that buildup travels back down through the pipes to be washed out.
Make sure that water jetting is always done by an experienced, qualified plumber. If someone without experience tries to complete this procedure, it could result in damage to your pipes.
At True Plumbers & AC, we will perform a thorough visual inspection of the system as well as use our specialized video equipment to look at what is blocking your pipes. There are some instances where hydrojetting will not work, such as in the case of a tree root breaking through the pipe. In this case, the pipe would need to be replaced to avoid further damage to the system. That can mean a spot repair, or on a house where the whole system is failing, repiping. Properties on septic have another possibility to rule out, because a saturated septic drain field will back a house up no matter how clean the line is, and regular septic tank maintenance is what keeps that from happening.
After the water jetting process is complete, our trained plumbers will again evaluate the pipe condition with video equipment to ensure that the blockage has been completely removed.
If you’re experiencing issues with clogged drains, it’s time to call the experts at True Plumbers & AC.
Clogged drains and backed-up drains are issues we fix every day for homes and businesses all throughout central Florida, including Lakeland, Plant City, and Winter Haven. Restaurants and other commercial kitchens get on a jetting schedule for the same reason they get on a grease trap schedule, and the signs your commercial plumbing needs repair are worth knowing before a shift gets cut short. For homes, a mix of jetting and ordinary drain cleaning is usually enough, especially alongside the habits in our list of ways to keep drains from clogging.
If you need help fixing your clogged drain and want to learn more about water jetting, give us a call today at (863) 667-6364 to set up a consultation.
