Avoid a Holiday Plumbing Disaster - Blue Ribbon Plumbing

The holidays are the most wonderful time of the year. It allows people to join together and spend time with the ones they love, while meditating on all that they’re thankful for. But if you’re hosting guests, you’ll want to know how to get your home ready for the holidays, including your plumbing system.

While you’ll probably clean your home and fix any nagging household issues, you should consider your home’s plumbing. You might be wondering, “How do I prepare my house for holiday guests?”

When it comes to your plumbing system, there are a few steps you can take, and that’s what this article will cover.

Holiday Plumbing Tips

Test your toilets and drains

Before you have any guests over to your home for the holidays, go around to all the toilets and drains in your home, and make sure that they’re draining correctly. For toilets, try flushing them and watching the water drain and refill; if there’s any sort of hesitation or malfunction, don’t hesitate to call a plumber. For your sinks, run the water for several seconds and see how quickly they drain. If the sink is clogged or draining slowly, have an expert take a look at it.

Enforce a toilet paper-only rule

One of the leading causes of clogged toilets is people flushing items that shouldn’t ever be flushed down the toilet. These include cotton balls, baby wipes, wrappers and feminine hygiene products. Your own family might know not to flush anything other than toilet paper, but your guests may not. You could either tell your guests not to flush anything but toilet paper down the toilet or put a small sign in the bathroom to gently remind them not to send anything down that might cause a clog.

Don’t dump grease down the drain

Whether you’re cooking a Thanksgiving turkey, a Christmas ham, or some other delectable holiday recipe, keep the grease out of your drains. You can do this by saving glass jars and dumping the leftover grease you have from any cooking into said jars. Grease is terrible for your drains because it cools, hardens, and eventually coagulates, creating a barrier layer that doesn’t allow your sink to drain properly.

Buy some extra trash cans

Sometimes people dump or flush materials down the drain because they don’t know where else to put them. Purchasing and placing some extra trash cans in your bathroom and kitchen can help to mitigate this dilemma. Instead of food scraps or toiletry products going down your sink or toilet, they can be safely disposed of in garbage cans.

Invest in a drain screen

Hosting the holidays means you’ll be doing more dishes than usual. One way to prevent a clog in the kitchen sink is to use a drain screen. This small piece of stainless steel can be found at most home improvement stores for under $5 and can be placed in your kitchen sink’s drain. It catches larger food scraps and prevents them from going down the drain. When you’re done with the dishes, you can simply pull out the screen and dump the scraps in the garbage.