Sewers don’t stop clogging just because it’s 40 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor during northern-Canada winters. Technicians at D&S Industrial Inc. in Winnipeg, Man., have to keep working, too, no matter how brutal the conditions.

That’s exactly what they do, thanks to an 800-HPRTV jet/camera truck made by Sewer Equipment Co. of America. When the jetter isn’t in use, the insulated truck’s recirculation system keeps water from freezing without the use of antifreeze. But once the truck arrives at a job site, technicians sometimes have just five minutes to set up and start jetting, or the water in the unit’s two, 750-gallon plastic tanks may freeze.

“Some days you have to be really quick,” says Dale Adair, operations manager. “Once you start flushing, you’re good to go. But you need to have your ducks lined up in a row. If the water freezes, we close the doors and let the truck’s heater run until it thaws. We do what we can to avoid that, like facing into the wind when we park. But the bottom line is you have to be ready to go.”

Rear hose reel

It helps that the truck has a rear extending hose reel that swivels up to 180 degrees. That means the driver doesn’t have to spend time maneuvering the truck until it’s lined up perfectly.

“Instead, we just pull up close, then extend or retract the reel as far as we need to, and swivel it as much as we need to,” Adair says. “That’s huge when you’re on a narrow street or road and can’t line up straight with what you’re working on.”

The truck’s pump generates up to 2,500 psi at 70 gpm. The vehicle carries 700 feet of hose and a no-frills inspection camera with 600 feet of video cable.

“The TV camera allows us to find out right away what the problem is if we encounter an issue on a flushing job,” Adair says. “We’ve obtained a lot of extra work because of the camera. It’s also good because a lot of people want to take a quick peek at their sewers after they’ve been cleaned, and this is a nice alternative to buying a separate, full-fledged camera van.”

Versatile system

Adair also likes the truck’s hydrostatic drive, which allows it to pump very little water at a low pressure when needed for certain applications. “If our old truck ran at too low an rpm, it would choke out,” he says. “But with this one, we can have just a dribble coming out of the hose and it still works. We can run the pump as fast or slow as we want. It’s very, very versatile.”

A remote control unit allows D&S to deploy manpower more efficiently because it turns what used to be a two-man job into a one-man operation. The feature is especially handy at more remote setups, like a manhole in the courtyard of an apartment complex, because the technician doesn’t have to be at the truck to pay out or retrieve the hose.

“This truck has been very important to our operations,” Adair says. “It has generated a lot of revenue we otherwise wouldn’t have made without the camera option. And it definitely does jobs faster. It’s made a financial impact and improved our productivity dramatically. It’s been a great asset to our business.”