A Public Service Announcement

Yes, this is. What do you think, a Republican can't put the public interest first?

As a sales representative for Electric Eel drain cleaning equipment for thirty years now, I just want to give my readers a bit of advice. If your drains back up, don't let the service tech who you call put a camera in the line without making a good faith effort to open the line first with a traditional steel cable snake machine. Make them work 30-45 minutes before discussing any other options.

Why? Because an awful lot of unscrupulous companies out there want to camera your lines first in order to sell you on a more costly job of some sort. If what you have is a run of the mill plug, tree roots or a plain old waste overload for example, a competent drain cleaning professional will have that opened in about a half an hour. You likely will not have further troubles for several years after that.

If problems persist, THEN allow them to camera. Sticking a camera in a hole in the floor, well, it's going to look bad. It's a sewer. Using a camera thus is merely a scare tactic. They'll try to sell you a re-pipe based on the line appearing bad when it really only has the remnants of sewage along the way.

Someone may try to tell you it makes more sense to camera initially. Bull-oney. No one in his right mind will put a camera in a line filled with water and sewage first: the debris must be gotten out of the way, either with a pump or by punching a hole in the blockage in the old fashioned manner, with a snake. May as well make them open the line first.

Do as you will, but if you get told you need an unnecessary $5,000 line repair like my unsuspecting sister-in-law did, don't say I didn't warn you.