On Mar 20, 2:21*pm, "Martin C."
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:18:17 -0500, ChairMan wrote:
I'd get a 1/2" cable if you can, much less likely to kink than a 3/8"

Good idea. I called Cobra again (800-835-2200) to ask about the half-inch
cable.

They told me Lowes does not sell the half-inch cable but they sell the 75-
foot length for $187. They won't sell a longer length for the BC400
because the 75 foot length barely fits (most people apparently leave the
last few yards hanging out.)

Tangent: It must be like tent bags which I can never get the entire tent
back in no matter how neatly I try to pack it in.

I wonder ... since I use this BrassCraft (aka Cobra) BC400 power snake
only about once every three years ... if others can advise me with more
experience.

Do you guys generally plan on 75 feet or 100 feet of snaking when you
have a plumbing problem?

Note: 100 feet will get me halfway into the roadway, I think, from the
house anyway. I don't know where the roadway cleanout plug is (probably
buried in the lawn somewhere).

If your municipality is anything like mine, this is what I would do:

Call them and tell them your drain is clogged and that you believe
that you have snaked all of your portion with no relief, so you would
like them to come and snake *their* portion.

If this were my town, they would come out, locate the clean out and
then snake from the cleanout to the main sewer.

After that, you'd know exactly where the cleanout is and you'd know
how far out you need to snake to clear the part that you own.

What happened in my neighborhood about 5 years ago is that as our cast
iron pipes got older and older, the town was getting more and more
calls to snake our drains. Since the town was responsible for their
section of the drain, and because there were no cleanouts in our front
yards, they always had to come into our houses and snake from our
inside cleanouts all the way out to the street. Homeowners basically
had access to a free snaking service since the town couldn't get to
their section without snaking ours.

So about 5 years ago they dug up our yards, replaced their section of
cast with PVC and put in a cleanout. If you call them now, they simply
drop a camera down their clean out, check for a clog on the street
side and snake if required. If they don't see a clog, then the problem
must be back towards the house and we are on our own to clear it.

In my case, the roots enter the pipe at the junction between my cast
iron pipe and the PVC wye which connects connects my pipe to theirs
and to the clean out. By "law" this junction is on my side of the
cleanout, only accessible (read: clearable) from inside the house,
therefore it's my problem. I've been snaking it with a cutter head at
least once a year for the past 4 years but I just ordered a batch of
Root-X foaming weed root killer which I'm going to try in a few
weeks.

I have to wait 5 - 6 weeks after the last cutting to allow the roots
to grow back a bit and give the foam some "open ends" to poison.

I won't know if it works until at least a year goes by without any
slowdowns or partial blockages, usually signalled by a gurgling toilet
in the basement when an upstairs toilet is flushed. Once that happens,
I know that the roots are back and I'd better snake before the the
pipe gets completely blocked by something catching on the roots.