High Pressure Flushing

This method uses high-pressure water to flush out stone, sediment or other unwanted material from the sewer. Our sewer cleaning trucks can generate 2,000 psi of water pressure with a flow rate of 65 gallons or more per minute.

As comparison, a typical household gas engine pressure washer can produce around 2,000 psi of pressure, but only with a flow rate of around 2.5 gallons per minute. It is the combination of high pressure and high flow rates that cleans the pipe. A flushing nozzle is installed on the end of the jet truck’s hose and the hose is lowered into the downstream manhole of the sewer section being cleaned.

This method uses the high-pressure water from the sewer jet truck to operate a hydraulic root cutter. The high-pressure water turns a hydraulic motor, which has a root cutting blade attached to the motor shaft. As with the cleaning nozzles, there are rear-facing jets on the root cutter assembly, which propels the cutter up and down the sewer pipe.

 

All cut up roots and debris is flushed down to the manhole where it is removed from the sewer system. There are a variety of root cutters to clean sewers ranging from 6 to 14 inches in diameter. Although bucket machines can be used to clean smaller pipes, we prefer to use root cutters because they are fast, efficient and cause less “trauma” to the pipe.

There are a number of rear facing jets in the circumference of the nozzle that allow the high pressure water to propel the flushing nozzle and sewer hose up the sewer to the next manhole, which is usually no more than 300 feet away.

As the nozzle moves up and down the pipe, it dislodges sediment, stone and other debris and flushes it downstream to the manhole, where it is removed from the sewer.

There are a variety of cleaning nozzles, each tailored for removing certain materials from the sewer system. Some examples are penetrating nozzles, which have one frontward facing nozzle to penetrate a blockage and break it up and spinning nozzles, which spin and scour the pipe walls during cleaning. A culvert nozzle is used to clean pipes in excess of 15 inches in diameter, because all of the jets are located on the bottom of nozzle.