Mike’s Top Three Thanksgiving Tips: Avoid Plumbing Problems
Mike’s Top Three Thanksgiving Tips – Nov 2017
There are three issues that consistently cause our phones to ring on Thanksgiving and Mike is sharing them as tips with you to avoid a call to a plumber in the middle of your holiday festivities.
1) Overflowing or Clogged Toilets on Thanksgiving
- This can be embarrassing for the hosts as well as the visitors. Let’s make the first step removing anything that might go into the bowl. Paper towels are at the top of the list. By design, they do not break down in water so flushing them along with anything else – biological or otherwise is a problem waiting to happen.
- If you have young visitors old enough to go “potty” alone, they may be amused by any toys, collectibles, or knick-knacks that might be fun to see diving out to sea. For the holidays, when these young munchkins are using your toilet unsupervised, it’s best to put anything that could be enticing far away and high up. This includes female-only products used and kept in the toilet.
- Buy a NEW plunger and have it clearly within reach in the toilet area so that kids can call mom and/or dad to get them out of a jam if they’ve used too much toilet paper and water is rising. By the way, single-ply toilet paper is a good choice for young visitors who may feel that wrapping their entire hands with T.P. is the only way to clean their bottom without getting poop on them.
2) Adults are People too, even on Thanksgiving
- Place a post-it or some other means of communicating to your adult guests that only toilet paper is allowed down the bowl. Should they become over-indulgent in their use of toilet paper, that’s what the plunger is for, and not to be embarrassed if a problem arises.
- Likewise, if Thanksgiving happens to be the day that your tank flapper fails, it might be easier to make a quick run to the home improvement center (they are usually open till noon), and get the right replacement, or simply place an out-of-order sign on the door. (Hopefully, you have another toilet for use, a friendly neighbor, or the gas station down the street in business).
- The easier choice is to call Muccia Plumbing, Heating & AC at 201-343-1414 and we will fix it
3) Blocked or clogged garbage disposal – the Thanksgiving surprise
- We could write a book on the things we have seen put down garbage disposals, including several cigars a group of teenagers thought could be ground up along with some leftover turkey parts and hidden. Not quite, boys.
- The key word to remember with garbage disposals is volume. Understand that garbage disposal works on the principle that taking larger pieces of food prep or leftovers like orange peels, and breaking them down to a smaller size allows water in your sink to flush them away.
- Here’s a list of common items that should NOT go into a garbage disposal
- Turkey or any other animal bones
- Egg shells, fruit pits, or potato peels
- Any plastic pieces such as utensils, packaging, or wrapping
- Leftover pasta, or stringy vegetables such as whole celery or squash
- And, of course, any kind of cooking grease, oil, lard, or deep-frying products
NOTE If your garbage disposal only hums, do NOT PUT YOUR HANDS OR OTHER TOOLS INSIDE. CALL MUCCIA PLUMBING, HEATING & AC at 201-343-1414. We’ll try to help you avoid buying a replacement.
