Tag: clogged drains

How to Keep Your Drains Clear of Hair and other Buildup

Clogged drains are a common household problem. Knowing how to keep your drains clear will keep your pipes healthy and reduce your need to call a plumber for sluggish drains or water backup.

Follow these tips to limit what you put in your drains

  • Do not put food, coffee grounds, or grease down your kitchen drains.
  • Pour grease into a container and dispose of it in the trash.
  • Cover your tub and shower drains with a mesh screen or perforated hair catcher. This will collect hair and let the water run through.
  • Brush your hair before you shower, to remove loose hair and reduce the amount going down the drain.
  • Don’t flush anything down your toilet other than toilet paper and human waste. Paper towels, feminine products, dental floss, and disposable wipes should go in your trash bin.
  • Read our guide on 15 things you should never put in your garbage disposal.

Try these tips to remove clogs before you call a plumber

  • Remove the drain stopper, clean it, then reassemble it.
  • Use a plunger to form a seal, push in and pull out, forcing water to move in the pipes. If the clog is in a sink, run a couple of inches of water before using the plunger.
  • Clean your P-trap. This is the U-shaped pipe under your kitchen and bathroom sinks. Place a bucket under it to catch water and debris before opening your P-trap.
  • Do not use chemical drain cleaners! These will just loosen up the debris and push it further down in your home’s plumbing and may cause more problems including burst pipes and sewer backup. They are also highly corrosive and can seriously damage your pipes.

Maintain your homes plumbing by manually cleaning your drain stopper once per week to remove hair and debris. Use a biodegradable and non-corrosive drain cleaner once per month to keep your drains clean. We recommend using Bio-Smart, which you can purchase from Always Plumbing & Heating and use yourself for preventive maintenance. Preventing clogs before they occur is the best way to keep your drains clear year-round.

15 Things You Should Never Put Down Your Garburator

As fall approaches, many families find themselves spending more time in the kitchen. While summer is the season for outdoor barbecues and campfires, fall is the season for back to school lunches, canning your produce, and packaging up the succulent goods from your garden.

With all of this extra time in the kitchen comes greater use of your in-sink garbage disposal. There are a few names for kitchen garbage disposal units. Whether you call it your garburator, Insinkerator or garbage disposal, they are a cook’s best friend! Grinding up and washing away kitchen waste with the flip of a switch. While a garburator is useful for many food items, there are some things that should never put down your garburator to avoid major plumbing problems. Avoid the following to reduce the potential for major plumbing problems, including clogged lines, burst pipes, or a damaged garbage disposal unit.

15 Items You Shouldn’t Put In Your Garbage Disposal

  1. Coffee Grounds: Coffee grounds turn into a thick pasty wad that can plug up your drains. Instead save them for your garden, which helps create nutrient-rich soil as well as keep critters out of your garden.
  2. Pasta: Pasta absorbs water and expands in your plumbing lines even after it’s chopped up from your garburator. While a few scraps from a plate shouldn’t cause an issue, disposing an entire serving of pasta into your drains is not a good idea.
  3. Bones: Garbage disposal blades aren’t strong enough to cut up bones. You will damage the blades and possibly destroy your garbage disposal.
  4. Oatmeal: Like pasta, oatmeal is a water-absorbing food. They can collect further down in your plumbing lines and soak up water, expanding and plugging your lines.
  5. Nuts: Consider what happens when you grind up nuts. Think peanut butter. If you throw a bunch of nuts into your garburator this is exactly what happens. Leaving you with disposal lines that have a thick oily paste to potentially clog your lines.
  6. Onion Skins: While the inside of the onion is okay to put into the disposal, the thin skins can slip between the blades untouched, and become wedged in the drain, trapping other food items and causing a clog. Compost the outer layer of your onion instead.
  7. Eggshells: There is an old wive’s tale that eggshells will sharpen your garbage disposal blades which is not true. While the eggshells will not damage the blades, the inner membrane from the eggshell can get loose and lodge around the impeller or in the drain. Instead, use your eggshells in your garden.
  8. Trash: Some things just belong in the garbage and not in your drains. Banana peels, candy wrappers, paper towel, cigarette butts, etc. The device is not a trash compactor, adding items such as these will lead to having to replace the unit.
  9. Pumpkin: When carving a pumpkin and the long stands get stuck to your hands, the same happens when you put it into your garbage disposal which clogs your drains.
  10. Potato Peels: Don’t overload your disposal with potato peels. While a few shouldn’t hurt, a large amount can jam up your disposal and it puts a lot of strain on the motor.
  11. Celery: Much like pumpkin, the stringy fibres can wrap around the blades and plug your drains or damage the disposal motor.
  12. Pits: Similar in texture to bones, pits cannot be chopped up with disposal blades. Save them for your compost instead.
  13. Cleaning solutions: Harsh drain cleaners and industrial cleaning solutions should not be used in your disposal unit. They can damage the drains and the drain lines. Instead, use ice cubes to clean the blades and some lemon peels to deodorize the disposal. A little dish soap can be helpful if there is some grease build-up. Always make sure your unit is turned off before cleaning your disposal unit.
  14. Corn Husks: The robust fibrous husks and the stringy silks of the husk create a threat for the garbage disposal unit. Keep the task of husking your corn far from the garbage disposal. Instead, husk the corn straight into the compost.
  15. Grease: We’ve all heard the phrase, Don’t pour it, Store it! Grease should never be put down any of your drains, including your garbage disposal. This is one of the leading causes of clogged lines. Keep a glass jar under your sink to collect grease drippings in.

If you notice the unit isn’t running smoothly, or if you have a backflow of water coming up from your drains, you may need to enlist the help of a professional plumber. Regardless if it is a garburator, Insinkerator or garbage disposal unit, the expert plumbers at Always Plumbing & Heating can take care of all your repairs or replacement needs.

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