Hydro jetting · Selah & Yakima
Hydro jetting for drains, sewer lines and catch basins
Pressurized water scours grease, scale and debris off the pipe wall. The jetting truck also clears parking-lot catch basins for commercial lots.
Chapter 01
What a jet takes off the pipe wall that a cable leaves behind
A drain cable is a boring tool. It pushes through the plug and opens a channel about the width of the blade, and whatever coated the pipe wall stays where it was. Grease, scale and silt then narrow the hole again, and the line stops a few weeks later. A hydro jet works on the wall itself: a hose with a nozzle carries pressurized water down the line, and the water strips the build-up off the pipe and flushes it toward the street.
That is why jetting is the answer for kitchen lines that keep filling with grease, for mains with years of scale, and for lines where the cable only bought a short reprieve. It is not a first move for every slow drain. A single plug from a toy or a wad of paper needs a cable, and we will tell you which one your line needs.
Burke crew in high-visibility vests running a jetting truck over a parking-lot catch basin
Camera first, then the jet
Before we turn the water on, we look. A camera goes into the line so the crew can see where the blockage sits and what it is made of, and so the jet is aimed at the real problem instead of the whole pipe. Roots, a bellied section or a collapsed joint show up on the screen, and each of them changes the plan.
Sometimes a line is packed too tight to get a camera through. In that case the jet goes first to open enough room, then the camera follows and records the run. If the video shows a break that no amount of water will fix, you see it before anyone digs, and the next step is on the camera inspection page.
Chapter 03
Parking lots, catch basins and commercial lines
The same truck that jets a restaurant grease line also clears parking-lot catch basins. A vacuum and jetting rig sits at the curb, the boom reaches over the grate, and the crew works the nozzle through leaves, silt and packed debris until the basin runs clear to the outlet. The photographs below are from one of those jobs.
Commercial properties are where we run it most: restaurants, wineries, fruit packers and retail lots across the valley. Floor drains, kitchen lines and catch basins on the same property can all be done in one visit, and the crew will work after hours when the business cannot close. The commercial plumbing page lists what else we handle for those properties.
Licensed and insured, WA BURKEP*795N5. Open 24 hours, 7 days: (509) 697-6574.
What we found, what we left
One catch basin, before and after the jet
Same basin, our own photographs. Burke's Plumbing has run from Selah since December 1981, and a debris-choked basin is the kind of job the jetting truck exists for.
Ordinary slow drains usually start with rooter and drain cleaning, and more of our crew at work is on the samples of our work page.