I am employeed by a company that offers a service to clear blockages in commercial floor drains; especially restaurants and grocery stores where grease is prevalent. We do use power snakes at times, but more often we use high pressure water.

Our technicians struggle a lot at troubleshooting the problem. We especially have a hard time diagnosing where the flow is going ie: to an outside manhole, indirect pit, small pump station...

We usually do OK if one floor drain is backing up. If a couple or several are backing up, it seems we take a long time clearing the lines and a lot of our "success" is probably due to shooting arrows in the dark.

Any suggestions? Advice? Is there a basic "design/floor plan" for floor drain layout?

Hi Mark,

Since most codes don't require don't require floor drains to be vented we pipe to wherever the architect places them so there is no "basic design".

A little tip for your service men,( when did we start calling ourselves "technicians"?) If you come to a drain that closes up behind a cable and is so full of grease that you can't blow it out take a steam jenny and run it down the floor drain. This melts the grease so that it can be washed out. Regards, Tom