Water jetting
High pressure water jetting for a pipe a cable cannot actually clean
A cable bores a hole through whatever is blocking your line. Jetting scours the pipe wall back to full bore, on houses and commercial kitchens both.
Chapter 01
What jetting actually does that cabling does not
A cable, or snake, works by pushing a spinning head through whatever is sitting in the pipe. It is fast and it is often the right tool, but what it leaves behind is a channel. Water finds that channel and drains again, which looks like the problem is solved, right up until the channel narrows and the same call comes back in a few weeks.
Jetting is a different approach. A hose rated for several thousand pounds of pressure runs the length of the line with a nozzle head that fires water forward and back against the pipe wall, and it scours grease, scale and root hair off the full circumference of the pipe rather than punching through the middle of it. The line comes out closer to the diameter it was installed at, not just open in the center.
The Roach Plumbing & Heating shop at 5535 Greenwood Rd, where the jetting rig is dispatched from
Grease, scale and the buildup a camera actually shows
Kitchen lines and older residential main lines both collect the same kind of buildup over time, just from different sources. A kitchen line coats with grease that hardens against the pipe wall between uses. An older main line scales with mineral buildup and the fine root hair that a cable clears the middle of but never actually removes. Either way, a camera run down the line after a few cable-only clearings usually shows the same thing: a tunnel through the center of a pipe that is still coated most of the way round.
That is the case where jetting earns its cost over cabling. It is not the first thing we reach for on every call. A one-off object stuck in a line, or a single root ball at a joint, is often a faster fix with a cable. Buildup along the length of the pipe is a jetting job.
Chapter 03
Residential main lines
On a house, jetting is usually called for after a line has backed up more than once in the same season, or after a camera survey shows scale or grease coating the pipe rather than a single blockage. It runs from a cleanout, the same access point a cable would use, so there is no digging involved for a straightforward jetting job.
Shreveport's clay soil and the age of a lot of the pipe in the ground here mean a line that has been cabled clear a few times without ever actually being jetted is a common thing for us to find. Getting the wall of the pipe clean, not just the middle of it, is usually what stops the calls coming back.
Commercial kitchens and larger lines
Restaurant and commercial kitchen lines are the clearest case for jetting on a schedule rather than waiting for a backup. Grease builds up steadily behind a grease trap regardless of how well the trap itself is maintained, and a line that only gets cabled when it finally backs up is a line that is going to keep backing up on the same rough interval.
We run jetting on commercial lines at whatever size the building needs, scheduled around service hours so it does not interrupt a kitchen mid shift. The same shop that jets a house cleanout on a Tuesday afternoon runs the rig on a restaurant's main line the same week, on the same truck.
Roach Plumbing — Louisiana State Plumbing Board license #LMP1321. USDOT 475176. Call (318) 631-4533.
Which one gets called for which job
A single object, a root ball at one joint, or a first-time backup with no history is usually a cable call. It is faster and it solves what is actually wrong that day.
Repeat backups, a kitchen line on any kind of schedule, or a camera survey that shows buildup running the length of the pipe rather than sitting at one spot is a jetting call. We will tell you which one we are looking at before we start, not after.