Thanksgiving is a big part of American culture.
Not only that it’s the most widely celebrated national holiday, it also comes with lots of food and guests. Surprisingly or not but Thanksgiving Day is also the eve of the busiest day of the year for residential plumbers. On Black Friday, as we call it, the majority of people either spend time with their families or shop, but the plumbers get really busy due to plumbing emergencies that occur after Thanksgiving celebrations. While you are enjoying your turkey and sweet potato casserole, your greasy dishes and leftovers from cooking are clogging your drains and sewers.
There are three main reasons that keep plumbers busy during holidays:
Usually if you celebrate Thanksgiving at home, you invite a lot of guests – sometimes relatives with their kids from afar would come and stay with you for a couple of days. And even though it is much fun and a bunch of positive emotions to see them after a while, it also means more showers and toilet flushes than normal. People would flush disposable wipes, cotton balls and hair down the toilet. This is like a heart attack for your house.
Every year the drain gets clogged with the same stuff: potato peels, celery, citrus peels, oil and grease, turkey skin, carrots and even turkey bones! It is a double load for your drains that stresses out your whole system. To make things worse, you get a crowd of helpers in the kitchen, and while they do help, they hardly pay any attention to what’s going down your kitchen drain.
These so-called helpers, usually inexperienced, overload garbage disposals with potato peelings, pumpkin pulp and other food waste. They do not use enough water to rinse them down the garbage disposal, stopping it as a result. Instead of putting cooking grease and oil in the compost pile, the cooks would pour it down the drain – little do they know that solidified grease can harden into a consistency like candle wax or clay, clogging pipes and drains.
Prevention is better than cure
To avoid a plumber’s visit on Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday, remember to check your plumbing system regularly, do not overload your drains or garbage disposal and keep a close eye on “helpers” in the kitchen. If the plumbing disaster did happen in spite of your all preventative measures, the plumbers from Norwalk Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning will be on call on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, coming to the rescue of your holiday whenever you need us. However, we wish you happy trouble free Thanksgiving!
Norwalk/La Mirada, CA 91766 | (562) 219-4085
