A few months ago a customer called because of a clogged drain in the garage. We sent our Calgary plumbing technician to their home expecting him to be done drain cleaning in an hour. Our Airdrie plumber diagnosed the situation, saw the water in the garage, and told the customer he would have the clogged drains cleared within the hour as we expected.

He told the customer they had two choices either an electric drain cleaning services machine which will clear the clog and remove most of the debris or the other choice was to perform a hydro-jet drain cleaning and clean the drain like new.

Drain Cleaner Differences

The difference between the two drain cleaners is the electric cable machine will help move to remove the clog and help the debris go down the drain, but the hydro jet uses high-pressure water to scour the inside of the drain and completely remove all obstructions from the drain the obstructions that are actually causing the Airdrie clogged drain.

The hydro-jet removes tree roots that are causing the drain line, grease build-up which is the major cause of blockages for restaurants and apartment buildings. Some homes have grease build-up depending on the cooking style of the people living there, most homes though have tree roots that have intruded the sewer drain and continue to cause a clog.

How We Cleaned The Drain

Getting back to the service call. The customer decided to go with the hydro jet drain cleaning, our Calgary plumber suggested, because they had had a plumber clean their drain with the electric machine only a month before and had the same problem.

Our technician as a courtesy removed his video camera from his plumbing truck and put the camera down the drain. What he found was an infestation of tree roots through a 15-foot section of piping.

The electric cable machine had just bored a hole through the roots still leaving 80% of them still intact. After reviewing the video it was obvious the hydro-jet was going to be the best drain cleaning for the situation.

Our technician suggested the hydro-jet machine, yes it takes sometimes an hour longer than a normal drain cleaning but when he was done, after reviewing the sewer drain with the camera both he and the customer found there were no more roots left in the drain to cause any blockages at least for another year or more.

What To Do

If you have a reoccurring sewer drain problem a hydro jet will clean the drain like new much better than an electric drain cleaning machine.

From our experience once tree roots have intruded so much into the drain the next option is to replace the sewer drain using trenchless sewer replacement, tree roots cannot intrude into a new trenchless drain.