Hi, I'm Alex Pasek, and I clean drains.
Today we're going to look at a few drains,
and I'm going to show you how to clean them.
When a drain is clogged,
the obvious problem is that it backs up
and water doesn't drain,
which can cause flooding,
which can lead to the drain
backing up further down its run,
where it's even harder to get a clog out of.
So regular maintenance of drains is really important
to avoid those types of things.
Here we've got a basin drain.
The water runs through the grate on the top,
falls down into this basin,
and the water that falls in
brings with it any of the dirt or sand
or whatever else it picks up with it
into that basin.
So the first step I do
is I pop off the grate top.
I see that it's very backed up
with the soil and sand,
so I start digging,
just trying to expose as much of the drain as I can.
I see that there's the exit pipe,
and around it is a lot of roots mixed in with the sand.
So I start to kind of break away at those,
eventually getting down
and pulling out the roots from the pipe.
I get further down into the basin,
and finally hit the bottom,
where the roots are all coiled,
and I'm able to pull out those roots
all in a few big pieces.
And then I give the drain
a quick scrape-out and clean,
and then pop the lid back on,
and that's good to go.
So, French drains are typically
at the bottom of a sloped driveway.
And the reason for that is
if the driveway is on a slope
and the house is at the end of the slope,
water will continue on the slope and end up in the house.
So the French drains are put there
as a way to divert the water away from the house.
First, I'm just going to take off the top.
I already can see that
there's quite a lot of debris in here.
So the first thing I'm going to do
is just get my shovel and start digging it out.
There's all types of different creatures living in here.
Some worms, some bugs.
The debris is made up mostly of soil
and sand and pine needles,
so everything that's good for
blocking a drain is in there.
Then I'm going to start cleaning the pipe
that exits this drain.
And obviously this is important because
no matter how clean the drain is,
we're relying on that pipe to bring out the water.
And I don't stop doing that until
either I can sort of see light
through the end of that pipe
or until I'm pretty certain,
by shoving something in there,
that it is now cleaned out.
And then I get out the pressure washer,
give the whole chamber and the top of it a clean,
which just allows for better flow
and a nicer appearance as well.
After that, I pop the grates back on,
and we're looking at a clean French drain.
It's important to keep an eye
on the level of debris in French drains.
They can fill up quite quickly,
even in the drier months.
It's easy just to look in and see, OK,
there's a little bit of stuff in here.
I can no longer see the concrete base of the drain.
It's probably time to open it up
and just see how deep this is
and then give it a quick sweep out.
These chambers are fairly simple to clean,
and it's quite easy just to get a shovel
and start scooping that debris out.
This drain didn't have any roots growing into it,
which is a good sign.
That means that this debris
hasn't probably been there too, too long.
It's probably only been there a couple years, maybe.
Once all of that muck is scooped out of there,
I took the opportunity,
while it was all open and free of debris,
to actually give it a good clean.
So I got a pressure washer there
and was able just to
clean off the sides of the drain.
And that just allows for better flow
through the whole drain,
as the water often comes in at the side,
not actually right through the top,
so the smoother the surface for the water to go in
just allows a better all-over flow for the drain.
I would say, you know,
don't be afraid to open your drains
and take a look in there.
It's not so scary.
It's probably nothing you can break in there.
Really, they are quite simple.
Generally just chambers that fill up with soil.
No harm in opening them up and starting to dig.