Prevent a Garbage Disposal Disaster During Thanksgiving
You do not have an invincible garbage disposal. You might count on it from day to day, thinking it will never stop, but, when challenged by the holidays, your San Jose garbage disposal can easily squat, just like an old jalopy on the side of the road.
You can avoid embarrassing garbage disposal disasters and costly emergency holiday plumber visits by taking some simple preventative measures.
1. Avoid Oil and Grease
If you’ve ever let greasy pots and pans sit around, you know the disgusting, thick ooze it can become. Now, imagine that in your garbage disposal.
Not only will it gum up the works, but it will also clog the pipes, causing messy failures that can transcend your sink.
As you cook all your favorite Thanksgiving foods, you will need to deal with a lot of cooking oil and grease.
Do yourself and your garbage disposal a favor by rinsing your utensils and cookware in hot soapy water before sending their residues into your garbage disposal.
2. Ease Up on the Food Already
It’s a garbage disposal, not a landfill. When your kids stack up their plates with food they won’t eat, don’t let them hide their evil deeds by dumping their meal into the disposal, OK?
Small pieces of food won’t cause problems, but those drumsticks and wings will have you calling plumbing 911 as your relatives witness the horrific consequences.
Coffee grounds, banana peels, egg shells, bones, and many other kitchen waste materials do better in the trash can than in the disposal.
You would never put sponges in your garbage disposal, but when you put food that absorbs water into your disposal you do the same thing. For beginners, think about rice and pasta.
Those foods can become rubbery, sticky, and thick: A recipe for a garbage disposal failure.
Too much of a good thing can also become problematic for your garbage disposal. Sure, potato peels can go in there, but you don’t have to load it up with peels from a dozen potatoes before you turn it on.
Load it incrementally with manageable bits to make sure you don’t break blades or burn out the motor.
3. It’s the Pipes, Not the Disposal
Pipes connect your garbage disposal, so you can have severe backflow issues without a failing disposal unit. Clogs on the other side of the sink trap or further down the line can compound any garbage disposal disaster.
If you seem to have slow or clogged drains, call for help before Thanksgiving. The piece of mind that comes with knowing your pipes work well will make your holiday memorable for all the right reasons, not because of a plumbing catastrophe.
4. Use Simple Maintenance
Although your plumber can visit your San Jose home at almost any time of day, including Thanksgiving, you can make your plumbing calls less frequent and memorable by following the simple maintenance instructions that came with your disposal. If you don’t have your user guide, try some generic maintenance procedures.
For example, start every day fresh by filling your sink with hot water. Mix in enough detergent to make some suds. Next, pull the drain plug and crank up your disposal. The flow of hot, sudsy water will clean your unit of any residual debris.
Next, use a brush with an 8-inch handle to scrub the inside of your disposal. Finally, to give your disposal a natural scent fit for your over-critical relatives, put some lemon peels in the unit and turn it on. Lemon peels won’t tear up your unit and will give it a fresh scent.
By taking some simple measures, you can prevent a garbage disposal disaster during Thanksgiving. If you do everything right, you probably won’t have a problem. Just in case, however, keep your plumber’s phone number handy on a sticker or notecard kept near your sink.
Don’t get clogged up this Thanksgiving in your San Jose, CA home, call Genmor Plumbing Inc. today at 408-215-4612.
