Scheduled Commercial Drain Maintenance in the Valley

A maintenance visit jets the lines that have a history of clogging, before they clog. For a restaurant account, that is usually the trunk lines that carry the kitchen branches into the main, plus the branches that serve the fixtures that have caused trouble. It is the same work we do on a stoppage call, done on your schedule instead of in the middle of a rush.

We do the work before opening or after close, and the inside portion usually takes one to two hours. If the line has not been looked at in a while, a camera pass shows what the wall looks like and whether it needs more than jetting.

Every visit is recorded by date on your account. That matters more than it sounds. With the date of the last jetting on file, the next visit is scheduled from the record, not from memory. One restaurant account we serve is on a June and October rhythm, and the log is what keeps it there.

Your invoices are also your paper trail. Phoenix's FOG manual says service invoices need to be on site for three years and available to the city on request, and that is the standard worth keeping for drain service too. We also suggest keeping your own log next to it. Our free grease trap maintenance log is a simple place to do that, and the date of every jetting visit belongs in it.

The interval comes from your stoppage history, not from a formula. We look at how often the line has stopped, what a camera shows, and how much grease the kitchen puts down it. EPA's sewer cleaning fact sheet cites a finding that 80 percent of problems occur in 25 percent of a system, which is why we concentrate on the branches and trunk lines that already have a record instead of cleaning everything equally. Phoenix does the same on a city scale: it cleans roughly a quarter to a third of its sewers each year and sends a camera first.

Two things move the interval. A kitchen with heavy fryer and pan traffic puts more grease down the line than a sandwich counter. And a line with scale, roots or a sag clogs faster than a clean one, which is a repair question, not a cleaning one.

Pumping and jetting are separate jobs that work together. Phoenix wants hydromechanical interceptors pumped every 30 days and gravity interceptors at least every three months. We do not pump, and a licensed hauler does. We coordinate the timing, so a jetting visit lands shortly before a pump-out and the hauler removes what the jet loosened. See our grease trap service for the repair and inspection side.

A maintenance program fits:

• Restaurants and bars whose kitchen lines carry grease and starch. See restaurant plumbing.
• Apartment buildings and HOAs with older kitchen stacks. Our page on apartment building drain cleaning covers the stacks.
• Facilities with restrooms that stop up repeatedly, once a camera has shown the cause. See commercial restroom repeat stoppages.

It does not fit:

• A line with a break or a sag. Cleaning a broken pipe on a schedule is paying to wash out a defect. A camera inspection comes first, then repair.
• A building with new pipe and no stoppage history. There is nothing to prevent yet. Keep the log and call us if that changes.
• A one-time problem. If the cause was a dropped object, a single cleaning is the answer.

It does not replace your daily habits. Scraping plates, using strainers and keeping grease out of drains is cheaper than any cleaning visit. The city's own FOG manual says it plainly, and it does not replace the interceptor pumping Phoenix requires. A program also does not make a bad line good. If the camera shows damage, we say so and propose the repair.

Call with your type of business, your stoppage history and the date of your last cleaning, and we will recommend a starting interval and put the first visit on the calendar. We give free estimates and an upfront price before work starts, and we run 24/7 emergency service for the stoppage that happens between visits. See commercial drain cleaning and hydro jetting for the services behind it.