How Powerful are Sewer Cleaners?

Sewer cleaners suck, literally. They take the stickiest and most hard-to-dislodge grime and debris from sewers using raw suction power from its powerful engines. They help keep the sewers of cities and towns clean, and prevent flooding that could've resulted from the things that get stuck inside sewers. On the other hand, how well can these sewer cleaners do their job?

It depends on the type of motor the truck runs on: positive displacement (PD) or fan. They both can draw a lot of water and sludge per minute, although the PD model runs far better than the fan. Many PD-type sewer cleaners can move 5,000 cubic feet of water per minute (cfm), with the smaller PD-type units rated at around 2,000. There's no specific figure for fans, but suction power can be estimated by the horsepower, in which the PD has the upper hand.

To put it into perspective, imagine you have a pool 30 feet wide and 60 feet long, with depths between 3 and 10 feet. Doing the math, the pool can hold up to 11,700 cubic feet of water. Now, if you have a PD-type sewer cleaner move all that water out of the pool, it will only take the cleaner roughly two and a half minutes. That's how powerful these cleaners are.