Don’t Let a Stopped Drain Ruin Your Ho Ho Holiday Cheer

By Billy Aldridge

We all remember the choreographed mayhem that Chevy Chase endured in the motion picture Christmas Vacation.  Most of us can relate to a happy holiday being undermined by wayward relatives, hapless delivery drivers and a culinary catastrophe or two along the way.  So the last thing that you want is for everyone to remember the Christmas when Santa appeared dressed as a plumber.

The Ghost of Christmas Dinner Past

Being home for the holidays usually means preparing Christmas dinner for the family.  The downside to cooking the holiday feast is that the cleanup can easily wind up overwhelming your pipes, resulting in a call to yours truly.  If you don’t want to add yet another mouth to feed during the holidays, here are some things you need to be made aware:

•   Fat is not your friend – While gravy helps make the turkey go down better in people, when it comes to plumbing the opposite is generally the case.  Anything containing fat, such as gravy boats, plates and serving platters need to be wiped clean with a paper towel before being washed in the sink.  Even then you want to use plenty of hot water before, during and after doing the holiday dishes.  That’s because any fat left in the pipes can quickly congeal into a blockage that requires a snake to clear.  One of the remedial steps is to fill your sink with hot water and a few drops of  liquid detergent, then pull the stopper to flush out the pipes after the dishes are done.  
• Don’t give your disposal indigestion – While the modern garbage disposal is a wonderful invention, it was never designed to eat everything.  While most people know to avoid putting bones, gristle or other hard to grind substances into the disposal, they may not be aware that these devices also do not like to be fed a diet of celery, poultry skins, potato and onion peels, all of which can be hard to break down.  Disposals also need an occasional deep cleaning in order to eliminate odor.  (Below is a video that shows you how to eliminate “Stinky Disposal Syndrome” from your home.)

•   Is stuffing going to stuff your pipes? – As a rule anything that is pulpy, such as stuffing, pumpkin flesh and squash can form a paste that can quickly gum up the works.  Just like pancake batter (another substance you should never pour down the drain), once past the disposal, these substances can quickly swell up and clog any drain.  Again, the solution is not to put these substances into the disposal.
• The extended family can also prove to be a strain on your plumbing.  While you can’t exactly read relatives the riot act, you can make sure that in their effort to help you clear the holiday dishes that they don’t inadvertently break any of the rules set above.  (That is if you can get them to help with the dishes.)

The bottom line is that like it or not, the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas are two of the busiest days of the year for plumbers like me.  If you follow the advice above you should be able to make sure that I stay out of your home for the holidays.

Billy Aldridge is one of the Doctor’s of Plumbology at Aldridge and Sons Plumbing, a residential and commercial plumbing contractor located in Jacksonville, Florida.  For more information and helpful how-to videos visit their site at http://plumbers-jacksonville-fl.com