Are you contemplating whether or not you need to clean your drains before the holidays or even during them? The truth is that if you’re not scheduling a hydro-jet cleaning, you could be setting yourself up for major clogs during the winter and holiday season. This is because, under normal use, small amounts of grease, soda, food particles, and toilet paper can get stuck in along the walls of your drain lines. This alone can lead to slow drains. During the holiday season, your building will see more traffic in the form of increased visitors and extended family members coming for the day, weekend, and even the full two weeks during Christmas and the New Year. This increased stress on your drain lines can lead to full clogs that can affect numerous units in your condo or apartment building. Scheduling regular hydro-jet cleaning services can prevent these small build-ups from becoming costly and disgusting drain clogs.
What Is Hydro-Jetting?
Hydro-jetting is the process of cleaning drains with water. If you’ve ever seen or used a powerwasher to clean the outside of a house or a sidewalk or driveway, you already have an idea of what a pipe hydro-jetter does. It is a machine that uses pressurized water to blast away dirt and debris from the insides of drain pipes and sewer lines. It is extremely effective because the water removes everything in its path and washes it into the municipal water treatment system.
Why Is Hydro-Jetting Better Than Chemical Drain Cleaners and Snakes?
At this point, you may be thinking, this sounds great, but I have a bottle of chemical drain cleaner and a snake for clog emergencies that my maintenance team can use if we get a slow drain or a backup. While it’s always good to have a backup plan in case of emergencies, using liquid drain cleaners and snakes can be more harmful than helpful, especially if used by someone who is untrained. Snakes may not remove all of the clog, and you could accidentally punch a hole through the pipe. Chemical drain cleaners don’t know the difference between a pipe wall and a clog. They eat through everything regardless, and if the cleaner doesn’t dissolve the clog, it can sit in your pipes. The worst-case scenario involves someone using the cleaner, not realizing the clog is still in place, and turning on the water to rinse the cleaner down the pipe only to get splashed. This can cause extreme injuries, especially if the person gets splashed in the face and eyes. Hydro jetting, by contrast, is much safer for you and your pipes.
Benefits of Hydro-Jetting for Plumbing Maintenance
If you’re still not sure that hydro jetting is right for the plumbing pipes in your Chicago building, let’s take a look at some of the benefits when compared to chemical pipe cleaners and snaking.
1. Clears and Cleans Pipes of Clog Material
Hydro-jetting is effective and safe for completely clearing all types of clogs. When you opt to use a snake to clear a clog, you are simply twisting a hole through the clog to help water flow down the pipe and into the sewer system. The walls of the pipe may still have grease and other debris along the edges that can trap new debris and quickly form another clog. Hydro-jetting completely clears the clog and cleans the pipe down to the interior walls, which helps slow down the buildup of debris, like grease, oil, and solids, that can lead to a pipe clog. Hydro-jetting has even been known to blast away tree roots from sewer lines.
2. Hydro-Jetting Does Not Damage Pipes
Hydro-jetting is safe to use on all types of pipes, and the risk of damaging your pipes is nearly non-existent. By contrast, incorrectly using a snake or using drain cleaner and not thoroughly flushing the pipe can damage your drain lines, leading to holes and cracks, and the eventual need to replace the pipe. Hydro-jetting does not damage drain lines. Instead, the high-pressure water is pumped through the pipes at a rate that breaks apart and flushes clogs.
3. It’s Environmentally Friendly
Since hydro-jetting only uses high-pressure water, it is completely environmentally friendly. Once the debris from the clog is flushed through the pipe, it enters the sewer system where it is treated by the city’s water treatment plant. There are no harsh chemicals involved in the process that could lead to soil or water contamination that could harm animals and plant life.
4. Works on All Types of Drain Pipes
Hydro-jetting is safe for all types of drain pipes, including cast iron and PVC. Hydro-jetting can even be used to clean out kitchen drain stacks. The only time hydro-jetting wouldn’t be recommended is if your pipes are extremely old and/or brittle, and accidentally damaging old pipes with the hydro-jet process is prevented by a pre-cleaning camera inspection.
5. Reaches All Drain Pipes
Hydro-jetting can reach all the pipes in a run. This is because the water doesn’t have a limit to its reach, like a snake or drain cleaner. In order to reach a deep clog with a snake, you’d need to have an extremely long snake or access to a nearby cleanout. When using drain cleaner for a deep clog, the liquid may simply not get to the clog. Instead, the drain cleaner coats the pipe as it goes and simply runs out before it reaches the deep clog. You can think of this as pouring oil down a cutting board. At the top of the board, a lot of oil is present, but as that oil continues to flow, some of it gets stuck to the board, resulting in less and less flow until you just have a little drip. This means that when using drain cleaner, you may not be able to get enough cleaner on the clog to dissolve it. Hydro-jetting, on the other hand, can reach even the deepest clogs and remove them completely.
Propane Hydro-Jetting with Nu Flow of Chicago
When it comes to properly maintaining your pipes and preventing future clogs, you can’t go wrong with a pipe cleaning and lining service from Nu Flow of Chicago. Propane hydro-jet machines have the ability to unclog and clean your drain pipes right down to the pipe walls, and propane power jetters can even be used on ozone action days because they do not cause excessive air pollution.
Once your building’s pipes are properly cleaned, prepared, and dried, a new epoxy pipe liner can be inserted to help restore your pipes and prevent future pipe corrosion as well as chemical leeching from the metal walls of your pipes. This is a much cleaner and less costly way to rehabilitate your plumbing pipes.
To learn more about the benefits of hydro-jetting and to schedule a building pipe assessment or epoxy pipe lining, contact us at 815-790-9000.