You are a plumber and you are thinking about purchasing your first drain cleaning water jetter? Here are tips to help you choose the right jetter machine for your company’s needs and understand why it’s important.
First, we need to look at what type of work you’ll be doing with your new water jetter machine.
Domestic drain cleaning jetter
Some drain cleaners specialize in residential maintenance. This means servicing all the drains from the house to the street: sewer and stormwater. When you are looking at water jetter machines, you want to match the flow and pressure to the pipe size. Typically, sewer and stormwater pipes range from 50-100 maybe 150mm.
For this job, we suggest using a flow rate of 20-30 LPM. The pressure should be between 4000-5000 PSI. You can choose a greater flow rate and pressure, obviously the bigger machines will be more efficient.
Root chokes are the most common causes of issues on both sewer and storm water. You might want to ensure that you have a good root cutting nozzle, as well as some penetrator, and flushing heads.
The majority of domestic drain cleaners use their mini reels, rather than their main reels for jetting. When they enter the property, the access point could be up to 60m away from their vehicle. They usually run out their main hose. Then they connect it to their mini reel over the top of where they are accessing the drain.
The mini reels gives them an additional 60m of hose. It also has a ball valve so they can control the pressure from the access point. This way, you get 60m of hose to work with from where you enter the drain to get to the blockage.
Commercial and domestic drain cleaning jetter
Some drain cleaners do both domestic and commercial jobs. This could include a school or shopping centre or factory units where we can see some larger drains up to 150-225 and maybe 300mm.
For this kinds of jobs, we suggest getting drain cleaning jetters with slightly higher flow rates, between 30-45 LPM. The pressure can still range between 4000-5000 PSI.
When drain cleaning at a shopping center, factory, or business, you can usually access a pit or manhole. Your vehicle should be close enough to the access point for you to use your main hose. To maintain a higher flow, you want the main hose to be 3/8″.
Paper clogs, wet wipes, or things flushed down the toilet cause the majority of the chokes here. Drain cleaners use strong flushing heads to clear “soft chokes.” These heads include bomb nozzles, rear–facing turbines, and nozzles with powerful jets focused at the back.
Domestic and light commercial is one of the biggest sectors of maintenance plumbers that we deal with. Now that you know the best jetters for these two jobs, you need to consider the type of vehicle you will use. Also, think about which jetter design will be most effective for you.
Choosing the right vehicle solution:
Domestic and light commercial drain cleaners commonly use 4 types of vehicles mounted jetting systems:
Each of them have pros and cons, at the end, it will depend of your needs (urban or rural interventions) and budget.
We’ve written a guide on how to decide on the ideal jetter solution for your specific location and needs. We will post our guide on each vehicle shortly.
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