Drain Jetting From Kärcher

[Brad93]

No it’s not a genuine Kärcher accessory. They don’t make them 50 meters long as far as I could find so ordered one from EBay.

We have a karcher HDS 601 which is a commercial / semi profresssional unit.
It’s putting out about 120-150 bar

 

[brightspark]

that is one hell of a length one I borrowed was only 15 meters none genuine and worked well

 

[armalites]

I have one and I have a Karcher 601 but it's not 50m. I suspect it's too much for it to drag. I think mine is 15-20m and even with that you do have to feed it a bit.

 

[angellonewolf]

ring the water board if they find a rod down there say dont know any thing about that

 

[carbon]

With that machine the pressure is 120 bar at just over 9 l/m. With that the nozzle required would be 035 or 037 any bigger and performance is going to suffer

 

[Bullet2012]

I have one and I have a Karcher 601 but it's not 50m. I suspect it's too much for it to drag. I think mine is 15-20m and even with that you do have to feed it a bit.

Yep, exactly what I have. I have not yet had to assist mine but maybe because I clean our drains a couple of times a year

 

[fizzy]

I spent a few years helping a very good mate of mine who had the local Dyno Rod franchise(sadly passed away now). Proper jetters are seriously powerful bits of kit with huge flow rates. I once tried a small hose on a Karcher and it was rubbish.
To get rods out you really need to find a man hole down stream and push them through.

Did he lose the rods through suction or by forgetting to keep twisting them to tighten?

 

[addjunkie]

@Brad93 your old man has a tractor if I remember correctly...you can hire PTO driven drain jetters, quite impressive when you see them in action.

 

[Brad93]

With that machine the pressure is 120 bar at just over 9 l/m. With that the nozzle required would be 035 or 037 any bigger and performance is going to suffer

I think this nozzle has a 15 on it?

 

[johnik]

i would find out who,s drain it is, if it belongs to the water co, ring them, they should charge the culprit, once they have been charged a couple of times, they may have a rethink on their disposal methods.

 

[frank horton]

this might seem dumb how about closing off some or making a smaller forward facing jet...

ask me about French drains.....hahaha......

ur poor ol dad.....!!!!!!

 

[carbon]

Just had a quick look through a few charts for sewer nozzles. Looks like the closest available should be ‘04’ with 1 forward and three back. Think if it’s an 15 then its going to be way to big. Machine needs to be at operating pressure for this to work if pressure is low on gauge then nozzle is to big.

 

[Brad93]

Just had a quick look through a few charts for sewer nozzles. Looks like the closest available should be ‘04’ with 1 forward and three back. Think if it’s an 15 then its going to be way to big. Machine needs to be at operating pressure for this to work if pressure is low on gauge then nozzle is to big.

Okay thanks mate. Where would I be able to source one of those from?

 

[DAPPH]

Well, we’ve had endless drain issues at home. Due to neighbours putting wet wipes down their drains.

We’ve had three sets of rods down there, lost one set.

Decided to order a drain jetting kit, 50 meters long off eBay for £150 that fits our Kärcher HDS.

But it’s not pulling itself down the drain. It’s as if the forward facing nozzle is stronger than the three pointing backwards.

Pulling our hair out now. We’re gonna end up digging the main sewer up at this rate. All because of the neighbours!!

Any pointers? This is what I ordered.

I’ve also tried it in a bit of 3” pipe laying flat on the ground with no joy.

I'm not surprised that the 50 mtr extension won't pull itself along the drain .
The individual pumping capacity of each rotation of the motor will be mainly taken up by the expansion of the hose when it is that long . That's why the official maximum extension is 15 mtrs added past the 15 mtr of the lance hose . ( 30mtrs total length past the pump unit )

I have the official OEM extension drain cleaner for my 150 bar Nilfisk professional and it was struggling to get past 10 mtrs along a 100mm water filled 1 in 80 pipe fall of a 100mm foul waste pipe , trying to jiggle it along got it a little bit further . If you read the specification for these home hobby washers and the extension I think you'll find they only mention a 50 mm dia pipe not a 100 mm as the power to creep is dissipated to much in the bigger pipe .

I've had several drain problems in the 13 yrs we've been here.

One was that when the place was thrown up in 1987 the knackers didn't chamfer or deburr the pipes . Nor did they make the inspection holes of new or engineering brick & a water resistant mortar .. They used 100 yr old ( plus ) ….recycled common bricks from demolished coalmine buildings that were taken down in 1962 & sand and water based glue to put them together as most of the joining materials had washed out .

The bricks leaked in ground water so did several poor joints in the drains . Opening the common use inceptor up it looked like a tap was on all the time for all three bungalows that use it . The salts in the water built up felspar at each entry point and this reduced the effective drainage by over 60 % . That resulted in the drains having to be dug up and three new plastic interceptors ( to replace the original one ) put in as there was no machine access along the 30 mtrs length of the side of bungalow .

It was surprisingly easy once the concrete path had ben bust up .. everything was barrowed out over the top of broken ( mediumweight breaker & a point " but not disturbed concrete up into to an 8 cubic mtr skip . Once the new pipes were chamfered & deburred I pressure tested them with a set of plugs from the nearest hire company & my commercial 12 volt tyre inflator . the trench was back filled with two feet of pea grit in which I also laid a skinned 100 mm perforated and drain & finished off with 40 washed stone & a four inch thick concrete path that had 20 mm fibre board nailed to the bungalow wall & the party garden wall as the guide for paths and three manhole covers

final height . I had added two extra manholes to that there is only 10 mtrs between each run back to the shared interceptor in my neighbours garden .

All went well for several years till last year , when things went wrong big time .​

I tried the power washer and the 15 mtr extension but as it got further down the drain the slower it became , till I ended up trying to push and pull it for 10 min or more whilst the pressure was on , to see if the movement would help..it didn't .

I turned the machine off and pushed almost 10 mtrs of the hose inside a 10 mtr length of 22 mm blue water pipe put a bit of red tape on the point where the nozzle was just about to clear the pipe end pulled it back a couple of feet . then fed the blue pipe c/w the hose down the drain till it stopped . Then started up the machine and jiggled the hose in & out the blue pipe then tried feeding the blue pipe forward , it worked .
I'd calculated that the reduce volume of the blue pipe would enable a back fill in the pipe for the creep jets could act against .

What does also help is trying to put the cleaner end in the drain ..... in from the other side of the blockage if you have manhole access. I had to make a " J " / hockey stick shape out of the 22mm blue tube using a bucket of just boiled hot water and a plumbers bending spring so that I could place the nozzle down inside the drain in the five foot deep interceptor shared .

What had happened in our case this time round was the street sewer had partially collapsed , when it rained the extra excess water ( most properties round here have roof & foul water going in the same drain ) was too much so the sewers backed up . Building up solids back from the fall causing a blockage , which in turn backfilled the street sewer up to our place which is 50 mtrs or so back & some 4 mtrs up the hill .

Our manhole covers stayed on , but the old gal next door who's bungalow is three feet lower got her lids lifted and back yard filled with several inches of raw sewage .

To try & help her as it was a Sunday morning I went fishing in the filed interceptor using a kiddies metal spring rake ( Aldi £4) bolted onto a thin three metre aluminum tube .. Blek!
I pulled out several old style sanitary towels & a couple of small plastic bags which were most likely full of dog muck . . They are not used in our household nor elsewhere say both the neighbours either side of us that use the same interceptor.

So I deduced that only place they could have come from was within the street sewer .
I use the power washer & drain cleaner to ensure a working route to the street sewer existed , suddenly the level of foul water started to drop & then drain all the three properties domestic drains over the next six minutes or so .
I them power washed everyone's drains from both sides of all access chambers , working from the communal interceptor point back to each home .

I reported the suspicions of a main sewer problem to the water board , they had a camera in it within days and had dug out & repaired the fault within a week .

Touch wood everything is OK . Roughly once a fortnight I lift the plastic lids on our property to check nothing is untoward .

 

[DAPPH]

Unfortunately I told my dad this, he carried on with the rods, then lost them down the drain.
Hence now we need to get them out before we involve the sewer company or environmental health.

There are chimney cleaning rods and drain cleaning rods these days.

The drain one's can be used for drains & chimney's . They are called Bailey Lockfast rods .. eBay # 142336059846 ….. note the locking square on the end of the rods .

A chimney sweeps set has a 20 mm or so long short stubby screw and no locking knub .
They cannot or should I say should not be used in drains because of the tendency for them to unscrew … they unscrew in the chimney too if your not always twisting them to keep them tight both on the out ward and return trip..

These Bailey drain rods have a square drive that locks into the front rod as the locating/ locking nut is tightened up . I have two sets so I can reach all points of drains on my property and through the boundary into the main interceptor that's in my neighbours garden & serves al three bungalows .

Store the blue rods fastened to a length of 2x2 to keep them straight as with time they will droop if left stood up in a corner in a bundle if unsupported . Straighten them in summer or use lots of hot water ….. lay them on concrete in between bricks so that the bend is uppermost away from the concrete . The sun or hot water will soften them , the bend will tend drop out due to gravity .. Collect them up at night when the straightness has set , again fasten them to a former of 2x2 to keep them straight .

 

[Brad93]

Right I’ve got it working!
I’ve put a button head screw in the nozzle which has massively decreased the flow through the forward facing hole and increased the flow through the three backward facing holes.

It now pulls itself through a 4” drain. I’ve had about 30ft down a different drain so far.

Will let my dad muck about with it down the sewer, that’s 6” so might not pull well at all.

 

[Brad93]

There are chimney cleaning rods and drain cleaning rods these days.

The drain one's can be used for drains & chimney's . They are called Bailey Lockfast rods .. eBay # 142336059846 ….. note the locking square on the end of the rods .

A chimney sweeps set has a 20 mm or so long short stubby screw and no locking knub .
They cannot or should I say should not be used in drains because of the tendency for them to unscrew … they unscrew in the chimney too if your not always twisting them to keep them tight both on the out ward and return trip..

These Bailey drain rods have a square drive that locks into the front rod as the locating/ locking nut is tightened up . I have two sets so I can reach all points of drains on my property and through the boundary into the main interceptor that's in my neighbours garden & serves al three bungalows .

Store the blue rods fastened to a length of 2x2 to keep them straight as with time they will droop if left stood up in a corner in a bundle if unsupported . Straighten them in summer or use lots of hot water ….. lay them on concrete in between bricks so that the bend is uppermost away from the concrete . The sun or hot water will soften them , the bend will tend drop out due to gravity .. Collect them up at night when the straightness has set , again fasten them to a former of 2x2 to keep them straight .

Yep we’ve got the cheap and nasty black rods with the short threads not those nice Bailey ones.

 

[Pete.]

Make sure he drags it right back regularly flushing all the material backwards otherwise it'll bury itself in the muck and you'll be no further ahead. Work uphill if you can so all the stuff it loosens gets washed downstream.

 

[Browser]

There are chimney cleaning rods and drain cleaning rods these days.

The drain one's can be used for drains & chimney's . They are called Bailey Lockfast rods .. eBay # 142336059846 ….. note the locking square on the end of the rods .

I won't tell you how many sets of both universal and Lockfast Bailey rods we've destroyed at work (Energy From Waste plant) rodding out blocked fly ash hoppers. This stuff can be 250-300 DegC and pushing a polypropylene rod through it does things to it's 'elastic memory'! I've looked, especially on chimney sweep supplies websites, but can't seem to find heat resistant rods so we'll just have to keep melting Bailey ones for now!

 

[Brad93]

I won't tell you how many sets of both universal and Lockfast Bailey rods we've destroyed at work (Energy From Waste plant) rodding out blocked fly ash hoppers. This stuff can be 250-300 DegC and pushing a polypropylene rod through it does things to it's 'elastic memory'! I've looked, especially on chimney sweep supplies websites, but can't seem to find heat resistant rods so we'll just have to keep melting Bailey ones for now!

They’d need to be nylon or UHMWPE but even so that would only take 180 degrees.
What about fibreglass rods?