Sewer Cleaning vs Drain Cleaning

“What is the difference between Sewer Cleaning and Drain Cleaning you may ask?”

Well, let us start off with the description of the word sewer line.  A sewer line, most residents and commercial buildings located in Minneapolis, Minnesota have one, is defined as a set of pipes and or drains that removes and carries wastewater out of these buildings and disperses it into a city sewer main.  Let’s rephrase that, when you use water, some examples are listed below, and pour it down the sink or flush the toilet the wastewater enters the drain lines, which in turn enters the main sewer line and then exits the building and drains into the city’s sewer main.  

You use both your sewer and drain lines daily whether at home or at a place of business.  Below are some examples of how we use these lines. 

BATHROOM DRAIN LINES

Brushing your teeth you may have excess toothpaste that goes down the sink.  When you take a shower, shampoo, conditioner, soap, and sand from work or being outside, wash away into the tub drain.   When you clean the bathroom with a bucket of hot water you are picking up hair, sand, food crumbs, or dead small insects like ladybugs or the annoying fly in the summer months.  The bucket of dirty water is then dumped into the toilet to be flushed away.  We also flush down toilet paper, wipes, solids, and cleaning products.  

KITCHEN DRAIN LINES

After you wash your dishes in the kitchen sink or dishwashing machine, the wastewater is released into the kitchen drain line.  The wastewater may contain grease, cooking oil build-up, leftover food or crumbs, and dish soap suds.    

LAUNDRY DRAIN LINES

Last but certainly not least, another example of drain and sewer line usage is when you wash a load of clothes, bedding, or anything else you may wash at your home or a place of business.  The wastewater is filled with dirt, grime, sand, anything you exposed your clothes to during the workday like sawdust, oil, grease, paint, metals, food, pollen, dust, and small insects.  All of these items drain into the laundry tub and enter into the main sewer line after each washing.

Every drain and sewer line has the potential to accumulate waste materials and cause a drain clog or backup.  The buildup of sand, hair, and some other items discussed above most commonly accumulate in elbows of drain lines.  Another common drain line clog is when human hair gets wrapped around the sink pull rod.  When this happens you need to have a drain cleaning performed.

Drain cleaning is defined as unclogging and clearing out a drain pipe.  You can certainly attempt to clean out the drains yourself or hire a professional drain cleaning company.  Drain cleaning companies typically use a drain auger or drain snake that has a flexible steel wire that gets inserted into the drain pipes.  The wire turns in a circular motion by hand or by a battery-operated tool.  Drain lines are smaller in size and usually can be cleaned within a short amount of time and effort.  

Sewer main lines, just like the smaller drain lines discussed above, also have the potential to accumulate waste materials along with tree roots and cause a backup.  Most homes in the metropolitan area have original sewer pipes.  Over time these pipes can crack, shift or a dip can form at one or several spots causing sewer vapor to exit into the surrounding soil.  Tree roots are drawn to the vapor and enter into the broken pipe.  The roots start to grow and live off of the nutrients found in the wastewater.  

Once tree roots enter into the main sewer line it is just a matter of time when they cause a backup.  The timing depends on how the tree roots grow inside of the sewer pipe.  A backup will occur once solids in the wastewater accumulate and are blocked from passing by a cluster of tree roots.  If you encounter a slowly draining basement floor drain or if wastewater is already present you will need to have a sewer cleaning performed.

Sewer cleaning, aka rootering, drain cleaning, pipe cleaning. drain clearing, pipe clearing. augering, pipe augering, sewer augering, mainline sewer cleaning, rooter service, etc. is defined as unclogging and clearing out the main sewer line by removing waste materials along with possible tree roots.  Sewer cleaning, aka sewer maintenance, involves a larger piece of equipment that is power operated and equipped with a drum that houses a heavy-duty sewer cleaning cable.  At the end of the sewer cable, we can attach different size cutter blades.  These blades spin at a high rate of speed once turned on.  As the sewer cable is being pushed down the main sewer line it is chopping up and cutting waste materials and tree roots into smaller pieces that will eventually slide into the city’s sewer main.  There are times when sewer cleaning isn’t successful due to the cutting blade hitting some type of a blockage.  If this happens, further investigation will be necessary to determine what the blade is hitting and why.

Sewer cleaning is not a quick process and involves a significant amount of effort.  Most homes located in the twin cities area have either a 4″ or 6″ or a combination of the two pipe sizes and the total distance of the sewer line from the house to the city’s main connection varies from 50′ to over 100′.  The final dollar amount owed to the sewer cleaning company depends on the amount of time and effort spent on unclogging the main sewer line.  

As you can see sewer cleaning is different than drain cleaning but serve the same purpose.

If you are located in Minneapolis and are experiencing a clogged main sewer line leave it up to your local and trusted sewer and water professionals at Cichy’s Water & Sewer to help you out today.