Drain jetting vs drain snake

What a drain snake actually does

A snake, or electric eel, is a flexible cable with a cutting head driven down the pipe by a motor. It punches through the blockage and, with the right head, cuts roots.

Water flows again immediately, which is why it feels like a fix. The problem is what is left behind: the grease coating or root mat is still on the pipe wall, with a channel bored through the middle of it. Everything that passes through afterwards has plenty to catch on.

What jetting does differently

A jetter fires water through a nozzle at high pressure. Most of the jets face backwards, which does two things at once: it drives the hose up the pipe, and it scours the full internal wall as the hose is drawn back.

You end up with a pipe closer to its original bore rather than a tunnel through a blockage. For grease especially, this is not a marginal difference. Jetting takes hardened fat off the wall in a way nothing mechanical manages.

Where each one wins

• Hardened grease in a kitchen line: jetting, comfortably
• Tree root mass in a sewer: jetting with a root-cutting nozzle
• Silt and sand in stormwater: jetting, because it moves volume
• Wet wipes knitted into a plug: jetting breaks it up rather than compacting it
• A blockage right at a fixture trap: a snake or even a plunger is quicker
• A badly collapsed pipe: neither, that is a repair job

The honest limits of jetting

Jetting is a cleaning method, not a repair. If the pipe is cracked, back-falling or has a joint pulled open, jetting will clear it and the problem will return, because the defect is still there.

That is the real reason to camera the line afterwards. If a drain needs repairing, you want to know on the first visit rather than after paying to jet it twice a year.

Pressure and nozzle choice also have to suit the pipe. Aggressive settings on tired earthenware can make an existing defect worse, which is an argument for inspecting the line, not for avoiding jetting.