RE: Let pro's be pro's. A plumber story.
Years ago I was like the mole, usually for the street sewer pipes rather than the household ones.
The hose for smaller household pipes was 3/8 in hydraulic hose with a dome-shaped fitting in the end.
behind the dome, pointing backwards were 3 small holes, when the pump was running it fed high-pressure water down the inside of the hose and out the backward pointing holes.
This propelled the domed head through the blocked pipe, washing the walls of the pipe clean as it went.
When it reached the blockage the domed head would penetrate the cause and break up and wash it down the pipe.
given time, we could clear tree roots that had got into the pipe and grown well on the moisture and fertilizer that was there.
The longest job was a 6 ft dia pipe with a hand-sized gap at the top, full of sand, there was about a mile of pipe to clean, fortunately it emptied into the sea, so there were no disposal issues.
You describe the hose much better than I could! It must be a powerful device if it can eat through tree roots and all that. Thanks for the education!
When you turn on your garden hose and turn it to the jet position, have a look at the size of the hole the water is coming out of, Town supply water is usually about 100 lbs pressure.
We had the same quantity of water, pressurized to 3,000 PSI, coming out of a 1mm hole.
I have buckled the sides of steel fishing vessels while water blasting the barnacles and growth off the hull.
I haven't, but I have heard that they use high-pressure water to cut steel sheeting to patterns, cheaper and easier than Oxy/Acetylene torches.
The longest part of clearing roots was to find them 100 meters up the pipe while working by feel. you could tell how you were going by the debris that was washed down the pipe.
Hi @exyle, i can't stop laughing, i could only imagine the look on your face when the guy got done in fifteen minutes. Hope you don't try to fix your car when you really don't know the solution to the problem, you might mess things up the more for the mechanic and got billed the more. lol.
But i learnt a great lesson from this story; know when to quit and when not to.