Hydro Jetting in New City and Rockland County

New City Trenchless runs a hydro jetter on Rockland County laterals for three distinct jobs: cutting root mats out of vitrified clay joints, descaling cast iron, and cleaning host pipe back to its original wall before a cured-in-place liner goes in. Same machine, three different setups, and the setup is what separates hydro jetting from simply pointing pressure at a clog.

Pressure Cuts, Flow Carries

Two numbers describe every jetting rig. PSI is the cutting force at the nozzle; GPM is the flow that carries what was cut out of the line. Residential sewer jetting typically runs between about 1,500 and 4,000 PSI, but pressure alone is half a tool: without enough flow, sheared roots and stripped grease settle in the first low spot they reach and rebuild the blockage a few feet downstream. The hose goes in at a cleanout, and the jets face mostly backward, which is what pulls the nozzle up the lateral and washes debris back down toward the sewer main with the flow.

Nozzles: One Machine, Four Jobs

Penetrator

A forward-jet nozzle that punches a pilot opening through a full blockage so water can move and the real cleaning can start.

Rotary root cutter

A spinning head that shears root intrusion flush with the pipe wall instead of just tearing a hole through the mat.

Descaling nozzle

Controlled rotary action that breaks hardened scale buildup off cast iron without resting the full pressure on one spot of the wall.

Flusher

Rear-facing jets and high flow, the finishing pass that rinses the cut material out of the line.

Descaling Cast Iron Without Punching Through It

Sixty-year-old cast iron in Rockland’s postwar houses narrows from the inside as scale grows, and it thins from the bottom as channeling wears a trough along the pipe floor. Descaling restores the bore, but the camera comes first, because a pressure that is right for a sound pipe is wrong for a wall that channeling has worn thin. Jet settings are chosen off what the CCTV inspection shows, and a line too far gone for safe descaling becomes a candidate for lining or a sectional point repair instead.

Root Cutting in Clay Joints

Vitrified clay pipe fails at its joints, and every offset joint is a doorway for the street trees this county planted seventy years ago. A root-cutting pass clears the mat and restores full flow the same day. It does not close the doorway: roots come back through the same joints within a season or two. Cutting is the treatment; sealing the joints, usually by lining the affected stretch, is the cure, and jetting first is what makes that lining possible.

Jetting Before Lining: The Liner Is Only as Good as the Wall Behind It

A CIPP liner is an epoxy resin-saturated felt liner tube cured against the host pipe. If the host pipe still carries grease film, scale or root stubs, the liner cures against debris instead of pipe, and the result is voids behind the liner and, in the worst case, delamination of the new pipe from the old. That is why every lining job includes a jetting stage and a post-jet camera pass to verify the wall is clean before the resin arrives, and why the jetting is priced inside the lining job rather than as an extra.

When We Leave the Jetter on the Truck

Some Rockland lines should not be jetted. Orangeburg fiber pipe that has begun to soften can delaminate under high pressure water, turning a cleaning into a collapse. A line the camera shows as already deformed or partially collapsed gets repaired, not cleaned. Long bellied runs are jetted with tempered expectations, since the low spot that collected the grease will still be there collecting it next year. The pattern across all of these is the same: in a county whose laterals date to the 1950s and 60s, the camera decision comes before the jetting decision, every time.