First camera, thinking of a Ridgid Compact

[phishfood]

The 4" cast exited the crawl space and dove down with a 45 or 60 degree bend within 3'. I expected that, as the house sits nearly 25' above the adjacent street where there is a 4" plastic cleanout that I believed to attach to the house sewer. It traveled ~25' at that angle before turning back horizontal, and within a few feet transitioned to plastic. After a few more feet, I could see the 2 way CO tee for the aforementioned cleanout. Shortly past that, the plastic 90'd down, and then 90'd back flat and immediately transitioned to 6" clay. I made it 2' into the 6" clay before I hit some pretty bad roots, and could get no further.

The cast looked to be in pretty good shape, although it is starting to show some scale buildup. None of the scale appears to be collecting paper or solids, so it isn't really a problem as of yet. Minor root intrusion at the transition from cast to plastic at 30'. All of the plastic looks to be in good shape, with no evidence of bellies or breakage. There is a bit of root intrusion at the plastic/cast transition at 50', and then the heavier roots I mentioned at 52'.

The camera head hung just the tiniest bit at the first downturn in the cast, and a little bit more at the turn to horizontal, but nothing problematic. The downturn to the plastic chimney gave me a little bit more problem, I had to pull back and bump that once to get through. The turn back horizontaljust before the transition to clay required another pull back and bump. To get the last 2' in the clay required a very determined pull back and bump, more than one, to get out to the 52' mark.

I ran two of the finned ball guides that came with the camera, one just behind the head itself and a 2nd perhaps 4" back on the spring. That allowed me a pretty good all around view of the pipe. Ridgid also sent 2 of the star shaped guides with it, but it seems to me that they would tend to drag and hang up pretty quickly. Anyone have any good experiences with the star shaped guides?

I need some more experience with this system in a wider variety of pipe materials, sizes, and amount/type of fittings, but so far I am liking it. I have an inspection to do, probably one evening next week, to look for the source of roots in a house drain line, and then as soon as I can get a weekend open I have a real test for it. A house with what sounds like a mixture of PVC and cast, the kitchen/laundry line is gurgling, and it sounds as though an remodel on a bathroom was hacked, as a previous plumber's snake came back up in the shower when it was sent down the roof vent.

[phishfood]

OK, I did that big job today.

Borrowed a General J3000 cart jetter and a Ridgid Scout locater from the day job company, loaded up the K375, a 4" 2 way cleanout tee and no hub bands. The K60 with some 5/8" and a bunch of 7/8" cable stay on the truck.

First problem, the 375 decided that it would not work. I didn't want to take the time to troubleshoot it, so I brought out the K60 and the 5/8" cable.

Second problem. I have used a particular 1 3/4" blade on 2" cast several times, and used it to do a nice job of scraping the wall of the pipe. It would go in hard, with lots of hangups and silent curses, but come back out pretty easy, so I knew that I had done a good job of cleaning the line. It wouldn't pass a spot just about 23' in, so I pulled back and put a smaller blade on. Encountered some resistance in the same spot, worked back and forth through it several times, then sent the bigger blade back through. It hung up, then broke free and headed down stream. Another 10', then I brought it back out, thinking I was into 3" pipe. Except it didn't start to load up when I passed back through the restriction. I already knew that I wasn't going to like what I saw when it came back out. The blade was gone, though the screw was still on the holder. The camera showed both halves of the blade laying in the pipe just past a belly. It had broken at the screw hole in the center of the blade.

I tried the 5/8" cable with the retriever, 5 or 6 times. I tried to send the camera down beside the 5/8" cable to get a visual, but had to admit defeat after 5'. I sent the 7/8" cable in with a straight spring auger a few times. I sent the jetter down, and managed to drag it backwards 4 or 5 feet, but had to stop that because water was backing up into the kitchen. I cut the big funnel retriever for the 7/8" cable back so that it would fit down the stack, but still couldn't seem to hook the blade sections. Finally I had the homeowner fill the laundry and both bowls of the kitchen sink, and dump them while I ran a water hose down the vent. I still couldn't be sure that the blades were gone, as there is a 3' belly that completely submerges the camera head.

So, I ran the camera down the laundry vent. I hit an increasing wye that I could not get through. So I sent the camera down a bathroom vent, and used the locater to find the sewer in the front of the house. Then I dug it up and cut in a 2 way CO, with an eye toward running a cable from the vent stack to the new cleanout, then using that to drag the jetter back past the belly, and pull the blades and whatever else back to the cleanout. It turns out that the increasing wye is a double wye, and the cable is jumping straight across it. Camera ed the main line, it was full of scale and buildup, but no cutter blades. So I jetted the mainline, then the sewer toward the street.

Back up on the roof, cabled both 2" vents for the bathrooms, and the 3" main vent between the bathrooms. I had the homeowner fill every sink and bathtub, then I sent the jetter back up the mainline, and had him dump everything as I brought the jet head back out.

Back on the roof to do a very detailed inspection of the bathroom vents, as he was worried that he had a backwards wye because of the snake coming back up in the shower on a previous cable job. Nothing that I could see, I thing that a snake just turned a wye backwards in that scaled up line. While I was doing that, I managed to jump the camera head across that same double wye, all the way back to the base of the kitchen vent stack, and got really comfortable that the blades weren't hiding in that belly.

Then a final run of the camera in the mainline, checking the condition of the pipe. A short run towards the city turned up one of the blade sections, which after a bit of finagling I retrieved, using a magnet taped to the camera head. Used a 4" blow bag to help flush some of the debris that was still present in the sewer, after which I spotted the other half of the blade. I used the blowbag again, and never could find the second blade section again.

The camera performed very well. It does multiple bends in scaled up 2" cast without a major fuss, can do straight runs in gnarly 4" cast with a little bit of work. While I definitely have not seen everything drain cleaning can throw at you, so far the Compact does everything I was hoping it would.

Did I mention I am absolutely beat, whipped, worn out, and have 2 muscles in my back cramping up?