Thanksgiving is hard on your plumbing. Avoid a plumber house call with these 3 tips

Paul Dolan for HomeServe

Thanksgiving is hard on your plumbing. Avoid a plumber house call with these 3 tips

Thanksgiving and all its casseroles, meats and treats are hard enough on the pipes inside your body. But the holiday can also wreak havoc on the pipes inside your home — so much so that plumbers have a name for the notoriously high-call day after Thanksgiving: Brown Friday. (Ew!)

Broken garbage disposals, backed-up showers, and monster clogs in your kitchen sink and toilets are nothing to be thankful for. HomeServe shares three tips to keep in mind this holiday to prevent pricey plumbing emergencies.

1. Skip the Garbage Disposal

Even in the best of times, your garbage disposal can get bound up by fibrous foods, such as celery, rhubarb, potato skins and onion peels. On Thanksgiving, the threat is only compounded by starchy leftovers like stuffing, rice, baked beans and mac ’n’ cheese. These staples of your holiday spread expand when they get wet, creating a carby clog in your drain. In trying to dispose of a plentiful bounty of waste, you run the risk of overburdening your appliance. This can lead to burnout (an all-too-familiar concept for many of us who are most thankful for these few days off) and a frantic call to your plumber.

Your best bet is to treat your sink as if you don’t have a garbage disposal at all. In fact, don’t even tell your kind, dish-washing guests that you have one, lest they get any ideas. Instead, put a strainer in the drain to catch particles, and empty scraps and leftovers straight into the trash can.

2. Remember: Oil and Water Don’t Mix

If you get nothing else out of this, just please take away one essential piece of advice: Grease has no place in your drains.

Anything greasy — like frying oil, fat, meat drippings and melted butter — is only a true liquid while it’s hot. And during that state of matter, you might believe that it’s perfectly fine to pour it right down the drain. But, at some point, you’re going to run some cold water in the sink. This could cause grease, which hasn’t made it all the way out of your plumbing system, to harden. Over time, it can clump together, creating an impenetrable ball of fat that only a plumber can remove. (Ever heard of a “fatberg”? Google it.)

Wait for the grease to cool before pouring it into an empty can or other disposable container. Then, dispose of it in the trash. If you’re worried about tossing too much liquid, you can freeze it first. If you have a large volume of frying oil, consider purchasing a grease disposal system or disposable grease bags.

3. Regulate the Restroom

No matter if you have overnight guests for the better part of the week or some drifters blowing in and out for dinner and dessert, they’re going to need to use your bathroom. And at the risk of sounding like you’re trying to micromanage your guests’ digestive processes, you’re going to want to set some ground rules.

Here’s what we suggest:

• Wait at least 10 minutes between showers. That’ll give your drains time to clear and your water heater time to catch back up.
• The toilet is for toilet paper and human waste only. Everything else (cotton swabs, food, wrappers, face wipes, diapers, feminine products, etc.) should find its way to the bathroom trash can.
• Flushable wipes are — get this — not flushable. Despite the branding, they just don’t break down like toilet paper does. So, the TP-only rule stands.
• Let’ er drip! If you have certain faucets you keep dripping to prevent pipe freezing, let your guests know this is not a water-wasting oversight on your part.

Whether you type these up in an aggressive font and post the list opposite the toilet or just kindly ask your guests to respect your pipes is up to you — just make sure they know what’s up.

An Ounce of Prevention…

Of course, good plumbing maintenance year-round can lessen the shock to the system that is a house full of guests and a kitchen full of food. But these tips should help you get through Brown Friday as uneventfully as possible.

And listen: Your local plumber (who’d prefer to be home enjoying their holiday, too, mind you) is practically begging you to heed this advice. And if you don’t? Well … at least they’ll get to collect sky-high emergency plumbing callout fees for services rendered on a holiday or weekend. Your house, your choice.

This story was produced by HomeServe Editorial and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.