If you're hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas, your plumbing is about to take a beating. More people, more meals, more guests using the bathroom, more dishes, more cooking grease. A holiday plumbing failure has a way of becoming family lore — the year Aunt Carol's gumbo clogged the disposal, the year the pipes backed up during Christmas dinner. Here's how to avoid making memories like that.
Cooking volume goes way up during the holidays, and so does the temptation to wash grease, fat, and oil down the drain. Don't do it. Pour cooking grease into an empty can and let it solidify, then throw it in the trash. Wipe greasy pans with a paper towel before washing. This single habit prevents more holiday plumbing emergencies than anything else.
Keep this list off the disposal: turkey skin and fat trimmings, potato peels, onion skins, celery stalks, bones, fruit pits, rice, and pasta. Most of these expand, gum up, or wrap around the blades. Scrape plates into the trash before rinsing.
With extra guests, toilet usage spikes. Now is a good time to put a small sign in the bathroom reminding people that only toilet paper goes in. 'Flushable' wipes are not flushable. Paper towels, feminine products, and floss should all go in the trash. Keep a plunger visible so guests can quietly handle the inevitable.
If you have a tank water heater, ten guests showering in a two-hour window will exceed your capacity. Stagger morning showers, run the dishwasher in the afternoon instead of right after dinner, and you'll keep everyone happy.
Before guests arrive, make sure you know where the main water shutoff is. If something does go wrong, being able to stop the flow in 60 seconds vs. 10 minutes is the difference between a story and a catastrophe.
We answer the phones during the holidays. If you have an emergency on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day, call us — we'd rather help you than have you wake up to a flooded house.
