Plumbing Tips for the Holiday Season

With the holidays just around the corner, plumbing emergencies are inevitable. Hosting the entire family and making elaborate meals means you are taxing your pipes, toilets, showers, drains, and garbage disposal. While everyone else is busy snagging deals on Black Friday, plumbers across the country will be working overtime. Why? Because Thanksgiving causes more plumbing problems than any other day of the year, prompting many day-after calls to the experts. 

Let us help you this holiday season! Read on for our proactive suggestions to prevent any plumbing problems. Here are our holiday-saving tips that could prevent any plumbing catastrophes this season.

1.Schedule a Pre-Holiday Home Plumbing Inspection

Expecting tons of guests this season? Call our experts to ensure your fixtures are ready for extra use with a home plumbing inspection. This will help you avoid any major problems that could arise over the holiday.

2. Do Not Treat the Garbage Disposal Like a Trash Can

We know you have a lot of leftovers, but this doesn’t mean you can throw anything into the garbage disposal. Avoid throwing poultry bones and skin, fruit or vegetable peels, and cornhusks into the disposal. This will clog the unit in no time! You can prevent garbage disposal clogs by watching the quantity and the substance of the things that go down your drain. While some manufacturers may make claims to the contrary, garbage disposals are vulnerable to many objects. Be careful what goes down your garbage disposal this Thanksgiving.

3. Keep The Grease (and anything greasy) Away from the Drain

Avoid pouring fats, oils and grease down your drains this season. When these substances go down the drain, they harden, causing your sewer pipes to clog. This includes turkey skins too, throw the turkey skins in the trash and wipe out your frying pans before washing them in the sink.

4. Avoid Clogged Toilets & Sinks 

With additional guests in your home, your toilets will be working overtime. We encourage you to advise family and friends not to flush cotton balls, swabs, feminine products, hair or facial scrub pads down the toilet. These items won’t dissolve and will cause clogs.

Your bathroom sink is taking forever to drain. What do you do? Most of the time, it is quite easy to unclog a bathroom sink yourself. While there are some nontoxic drain cleaning methods, such as baking soda and salt, boiling water, and wet/dry vacuums, the best way is probably with a drain snake. 

5. Keep your Toilet from Running Overtime

If you have a constantly running toilet, you are wasting around 200 gallons of water every day! Most toilet leaks can be attributed to blocked, worn-out, or ill-fitting toilet flappers. Open up the lid of your tank to see if your flapper is creating a seal. If the chain simply got caught on something, or the flapper failed to close, you can make a quick adjustment to fix the running toilet. If the flapper is down all of the way, but there is still a leak, you probably have to replace the flapper and/or flush valve seat. Make sure you find an exact match. If you can’t find the specific make and model for your toilet, then a “universal” model should work fine.

If you try any of these plumbing tips and notice problems, you may need to call a plumber. Severson plumbing provides both residential and commercial plumbing service and repair for the entire Central Oregon region including Bend, Redmond, LaPine, Prineville, and Madras. We are here to help with all of your plumbing issues and emergencies. If you are in need of plumbing help, contact our team today, 541-382-3720!