PLUMBING MAINTENANCE TIPS AND TRICKS FOR THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

In my household, the holidays represent a time when my family and my extended family all gather under one roof for multiple holiday events — Thanksgiving, and Christmas through the New years. And with more people under one roof than the whole year combined, it’s essential that my house is able to operate perfectly, to serve the abundance of people. It’s especially important that there are no major home plumbing problems arising throughout this time period. And if issues arise, knowing a few plumbing tips and plumbing maintenance techniques can really come in a pinch. With these essential plumbing tips and plumbing maintenance suggestions, you’ll have the necessary information to hopefully prevent all home plumbing problems that arise!

  1. Space Out Showers

Growing up, I always hated how unwilling my parents were to turn on the heater during the winter seasons. And then I bought my first house and it all made sense. Understandably, a hot relaxing shower seems to be the best way to escape frigid temperatures if your home is a bit too cool for comfort. It doesn’t help, however, when the shower decides that it doesn’t want to supply any more hot water. To avoid this, space out when people take showers. It takes a bit of time for your home to heat up water for showers so giving it the time to warm up (literally) is the first plumbing tip to ensure you and your family don’t have to deal with too many home plumbing problems.

  1. Watch The Grease

For some reason, all holiday foods require the abundant use of oil, grease, and fats to make dishes worth fighting over. These same fats that were used for the perfect turkey, however, are also the perfect ingredients in clogging your trash disposal and sink pipes. If you did happen to clog your pipes, however, a great plumbing tip is to know some quick DIY plumbing maintenance rescue tips to quickly resolve the issue. Feel free to check out another article on this here! If you’re interested in the key highlights, here they are:

  • Ice and rock salts can help scrub and clean the disposal. Pour the ice chips and rock salts down while running the disposal for maximum effect
  • Boiling hot water and rock salts work too, especially for grimy substances that may have solidified ‘cough cough’ *oil, grease, and fats* ‘cough cough’.  Pour a cup of hot water for half a cup of rock salts down slowly while running the disposal
  • Regularly running your disposals (a few seconds towards the ends of weeks or after a large event) is a plumbing maintenance essential of preserving the garbage disposal

  1. Place Small Trash Bins In Bathrooms

The last thing you want to be flushed down your toilet is quite literally anything that isn’t either the toilet paper or human waste. This is a major source of toilet clogs and this also happens to be the third item on our list of plumbing tips and plumbing maintenance advice. By placing small trash bins and ensuring you regularly clear them out as need be, family and guests will properly dispose of seemingly harmless (but extremely damaging) bathroom products. As such, this will hopefully minimize the plumbing issues at home you’ll have to deal with.

  1. Consider Seasonal Home Plumbing Maintenance

Before your guests arrive, you’ll want to make sure you troubleshoot any plumbing issues early. This will avoid potential catastrophes and incur a few repair or total replacements as well as extend the life of your plumbing products. Your plumbing needs may vary throughout the season and as such, the extra strain on your appliances for more hot water and such may push your products to new limits. Making sure you have done the problem plumbing maintenance in advance minimizes the risk that you’ll have expensive hidden fees in the future and increases your general comfort and safety at home.

  1. Get The Plumbing Tool Essentials

With such a high number of guests, you can expect for issues to arise, no matter how small or large they may be. And while there are a lot of DIY options that just require boiling salt water (for those clogs), some might be a bit more intense. Feel free to check out a recent article we posted on the 6 MUST-HAVE essential toolkits here if interested! A few highlights from this article are:

  • An essential product for plumbing maintenance is the plunger. Know the difference between a cup plunger and a toilet plunger. While the cup plunger (red cup wooden stick) is typically seen as the go-to plunger for the toilet, the shape is designed more for sinks and bathtubs. If you already have a cup plunger for your toilet, that’s fine. But for health/safety reasons, you don’t want to use the same plunger for both appliances. That might create more than just home plumbing problems.
  • Get a wrench. It will help you troubleshoot small home plumbing problems. Don’t feel afraid to get into your sink pipes and such. These issues tend to be small and easily fixable. Adjustable wrenches and pipe wrenches are great products for all your DIY plumbing maintenance requirements.
  • Plumber Tape will come in handy when you’re in a pinch. There are different types, each with their own level of strengths which should help you out with all your plumbing needs!

These plumbing tips should help make DIY plumbing maintenance a snap. If you come across a problem you might need a bit more help with, feel free to contact us and our comfort heroes can come and save the day!