Intro: I recently worked as a plumber's assistant for three days, and now my respect for the profession has grown immensely.
When one of your drains blocks up and you need a plumber, selecting one who owns an electric auger and video sewer camera can potentially save you days of work. A short plumbing job can stretch out into a long one when a plumber without a camera tries to clear a blocked drain by inserting a plumbing auger into the pipes. If it won't make it through, he must look for an access point below the blockage. If the metal pipe cleaner can't break up the clog from below up, his options include tearing through the floor and walls, so he can visually inspect the pipe, or else installing an additional drain line. I saw this first hand when I moved my office to a new site and my new landlord asked me to assist him with a plumbing task. My Internet and phone were not yet installed and I had some free time, so I accepted his invitation..
My landlord once worked as a professional plumber; however, he didn't own a video camera. On the other hand, he wasn't willing to pay money to a plumber with video inspection equipment. He much preferred to fix the problem himself. He called me into the project a few minutes after he discovered his sewer rod wouldn't break up the clog and he asked me to try breaking it up. I inserted the auger into the pipe repeatedly shoving the metal rod back and forth against the unseen obstruction, but whatever it was, it refused to give in the least. Perhaps this was a tough clog, I thought, or maybe the auger had reached an acute turn in the pipe and was only pushing against pipe wall. An electric auger could have turned any sharp bend, but not the mechanical rod the landlord gave me to use. If a tough obstruction was blocking the way, the electric auger's cutting blade could have hacked through it in seconds. We both tried passing the rod upstream from an indoor sewer culvert, but neither of us had any success. At this point the landlord decided we would circumvent the whole blockage by installing a new drain segment. With a video camera, I thought, he could have visualized the actual blockage in seconds. A job that would have taken a technician with a video camera and electric auger under an hour stretched out into a project that took the two of us three and 1/2 days to finish up!
I won't bore the reader with every gritty detail, but I will furnish some of the particulars. Let me start off by mentioning that if you're like me and have never done plumbing work more difficult than pouring a little Draino down the sink, or attempted to push out a clog out with a plunger, then your totally naive about what plumbers go through almost daily to expose plumbing pipes that sit underground and pass through walls. Essentially, the professional plumber will tear through anything between him and the pipes including tiles, brick, concrete, wood, underlying stone, and dirt that lie beneath your home's floor. This aspect of the plumber's task is back breaking work that necessitates using a jackhammer, sledge hammer, and other tools for prying loose broken tile and stone. Tiles that are being broken into pieces subsequently form razor sharp edges that can tear through thin work gloves. During the three day project, the tile shards literally sliced tiny patches of skin off my hands, and by day three, they stung like the dickens whenever I touched anything.
During the course of the project we not only had to install a new toilet drain, we had to reroute both the shower drain and kitchen drain in not one but two apartments. Once that phase of the project was completed, we had to fill in the trench, level the top, and place new tile on top of that. I had to lug 100 pounds of sand, lime, and concrete mix to lay the new tiles. By the end of the third day, my fascia and connective tissue compartments were in significant distress.
I was totally inexperienced in plumbing and therefore had to settle for minimum wages. You can imagine the cost if two professional plumbers were to do a job like this over three days. The lesson this story teaches is that before you hire plumbers to fix your clogged drains, make sure they have a video camera and electric auger with a cutting edge.
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Resources; 1st Choice Plumbing Inc.; 3502 Taney Road; Baltimore, MD. 21215. Call (410) 967-6547 Baltimore Combi Boiler
When one of your drains blocks up and you need a plumber, selecting one who owns an electric auger and video sewer camera can potentially save you days of work. A short plumbing job can stretch out into a long one when a plumber without a camera tries to clear a blocked drain by inserting a plumbing auger into the pipes. If it won't make it through, he must look for an access point below the blockage. If the metal pipe cleaner can't break up the clog from below up, his options include tearing through the floor and walls, so he can visually inspect the pipe, or else installing an additional drain line. I saw this first hand when I moved my office to a new site and my new landlord asked me to assist him with a plumbing task. My Internet and phone were not yet installed and I had some free time, so I accepted his invitation..
My landlord once worked as a professional plumber; however, he didn't own a video camera. On the other hand, he wasn't willing to pay money to a plumber with video inspection equipment. He much preferred to fix the problem himself. He called me into the project a few minutes after he discovered his sewer rod wouldn't break up the clog and he asked me to try breaking it up. I inserted the auger into the pipe repeatedly shoving the metal rod back and forth against the unseen obstruction, but whatever it was, it refused to give in the least. Perhaps this was a tough clog, I thought, or maybe the auger had reached an acute turn in the pipe and was only pushing against pipe wall. An electric auger could have turned any sharp bend, but not the mechanical rod the landlord gave me to use. If a tough obstruction was blocking the way, the electric auger's cutting blade could have hacked through it in seconds. We both tried passing the rod upstream from an indoor sewer culvert, but neither of us had any success. At this point the landlord decided we would circumvent the whole blockage by installing a new drain segment. With a video camera, I thought, he could have visualized the actual blockage in seconds. A job that would have taken a technician with a video camera and electric auger under an hour stretched out into a project that took the two of us three and 1/2 days to finish up!
I won't bore the reader with every gritty detail, but I will furnish some of the particulars. Let me start off by mentioning that if you're like me and have never done plumbing work more difficult than pouring a little Draino down the sink, or attempted to push out a clog out with a plunger, then your totally naive about what plumbers go through almost daily to expose plumbing pipes that sit underground and pass through walls. Essentially, the professional plumber will tear through anything between him and the pipes including tiles, brick, concrete, wood, underlying stone, and dirt that lie beneath your home's floor. This aspect of the plumber's task is back breaking work that necessitates using a jackhammer, sledge hammer, and other tools for prying loose broken tile and stone. Tiles that are being broken into pieces subsequently form razor sharp edges that can tear through thin work gloves. During the three day project, the tile shards literally sliced tiny patches of skin off my hands, and by day three, they stung like the dickens whenever I touched anything.
During the course of the project we not only had to install a new toilet drain, we had to reroute both the shower drain and kitchen drain in not one but two apartments. Once that phase of the project was completed, we had to fill in the trench, level the top, and place new tile on top of that. I had to lug 100 pounds of sand, lime, and concrete mix to lay the new tiles. By the end of the third day, my fascia and connective tissue compartments were in significant distress.
I was totally inexperienced in plumbing and therefore had to settle for minimum wages. You can imagine the cost if two professional plumbers were to do a job like this over three days. The lesson this story teaches is that before you hire plumbers to fix your clogged drains, make sure they have a video camera and electric auger with a cutting edge.
Google+
Resources; 1st Choice Plumbing Inc.; 3502 Taney Road; Baltimore, MD. 21215. Call (410) 967-6547 Baltimore Combi Boiler
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