3 Things You Need To Stop Doing To Your Plumbing
Whether you own or rent your home, you likely don't give your plumbing a second thought. You probably go about your day, thinking your plumbing will always function the way it is supposed to. The truth is, the things you do in your home can have a major impact on your pipes. Here are three things you need to stop doing to your plumbing.
1. Using your toilet as a garbage can.
At some point in their lives, everyone has flushed something down the toilet that they shouldn't have. Maybe it was trash that you accidentally dropped in the toilet and didn't want to fish it out or maybe you deliberately threw trash in the toilet--either way, flushing trash down the toilet is not a good idea.
Why is that? Trash is not made to be in a septic tank or sewer like toilet paper is. Toilet paper breaks down fairly quickly while in the septic tank. Trash, on the other hand, will just sit there and eventually lead to your septic tank backing up into your yard or home.
And that's even if the trash makes it out of your pipes. In a lot of cases, the trash causes major blockages in the pipes because it gets stuck and then the water and waste you flush has nowhere to go. That is when you have to call a professional plumber, like A Absolute Plumbing & Heating, to come out and handle your plumbing problem as quickly as possible.
2. Disposing of food grease down your kitchen sink.
After you have cooked fatty meats, you usually have to drain the grease from it. While it can be tempting to do this in your kitchen sink, you really need to avoid doing that. Why? Because when grease cools down, it hardens into a solid. If that happens in your plumbing, you will have a massive grease blockage that is difficult to get rid of.
If you are lucky enough to get all of the hot grease flushed out of your pipes and into the septic tank or sewer, then you will experience similar problems like when you flush trash down the toilet. So, you can end up hurting not just your plumbing but also your septic tank or sewer. Instead of washing grease down your sink, dispose of it in your garbage can once it has solidified in a disposable container.
3. Washing your hair down the drain.
Cleaning hair out of shower drain is no one's favorite chore. But it's a chore that you really need to do--preferably daily, but at least every other day if your shower is used by several people. When you don't clean the hair out of the drain, it continues to be washed down into the plumbing. This then leads to a big clog that is difficult to get rid of using traditional, do-it-yourself methods. So do your plumbing and yourself a favor and clean your hair out of the drain regularly.