Electric Sewer Snake – How to Clear Out the Blockage in the Pipe
When home owners have a clog in their sewer, they become panic-stricken. To solve the problem, they hire a professional plumber to clear out the pipe for them. The professional plumber might charge them an arm and a leg. To avoid spending a lot of money on the plumber, home owners can clear the blockage themselves.
Renting an Electric Sewer Snake from Home Depot, Inc.
Renting an electric sewer snake is cheaper than hiring a professional plumber. Homeowners can rent an electric Sewer snake from Home Depot. Usually, people should rent the electric sewer snake with the right length of cable.
The 75-foot snake usually costs $40 for four hours. The daily rental is not that much higher either. It is about $60 a day. The 100-foot snake costs about $50 for four hours. People can also rent the snake for about $70 for whole day.
To clear out the clog for a house on one lot, homeowners can use a 75-foot electric snake. It will reach the mainline easily. However, to clear the blockage in the mainline of many units on one lot, people should use a 100-foot snake.
Locate the Cleanout
Homeowners can find a cleanout easily because each house has a cleanout next to their bathroom or their kitchen. Usually, the cleanout is located outside the house, where plumbers can access the cleanout without entering people’s house. That is why the cleanout is near the kitchen or bathroom.
If one lot contains 2 to 4 units, each unit has its own cleanout. Go around each unit and find the cleanout before renting the equipment from Home Depot. Locating the cleanout before renting the snake will save homeowners’ time and money.
Sometimes, the cleanout can be hard to locate. In this situation, homeowners can go to the city hall and request for a map of the property so that they can locate cleanout more easily. Homeowners may have to pay a little bit of money to get the copy of the map.
Clear the blockage with the Electric Sewer Snake
To start, people can feed the cable in the cleanout.
- Turn the forward switch to on.
- To help the machine, push the cable in by hands.
- Avoid pushing too much cable in the pipe because it might get stuck.
- Once in a while, turn on the hot water at the sink or bathroom where the cleanout is because the hot water will help the unclogging process.
What to Do When the Cable Gets Stuck in the Pipe
Sometimes, the cable might get stuck in the sewer, and it is hard to get it back out because the cable will not go forward or back. The cable may be stuck in the line at a change of direction. Or, it might be that the pipe is broken.
In addition, if the pipe is underground and not in a basement or crawlspace, it will be near impossible to determine where the cable is stuck at. The cable might have gone out the side of the pipe into the ground and locked itself in. It may also have wedged itself into a curve or bend.
There is a little trick, however, to get the cable out of that mess. To solve that problem, homeowners can pull the cable back by hands while momentarily turning on the forward and reverse switches until they get the cable out. It will take awhile to clear the cable from the entanglement. But, it can be done when people follow the little tip above.
As people can see, to fix the sewer problem is not that difficult. By following the procedures above thoroughly, people can clear out any blockages from their sewer without spending a lot of money on professional plumbers. With this practical guideline, homeowners can solve this sewer problem with a peace of mind whenever they encounter sewer blockages.