5 Things You Should Never Put Down Your Drains

Your home’s plumbing system is a critical component of your home’s overall health, and clogged drains can indicate a bigger problem than you may be anticipating. The pipes in your home are tasked with carrying water from the city to your home, then the drains take that water back to a water treatment plant where it can be cleaned and reused if possible. For most homeowners, the process is mindless; we just turn on the faucet and water the water head down the drain. The problem comes when we put something down there that doesn’t belong, and end up with a clogged drain and have to call a Salt Lake City plumber for deep drain cleaning or even hydro-jetting. For more information on hydro-jetting in Salt Lake City to clear your drain issues be sure to visit our drain & sewer service pages.

To Prevent Clogged Drains in your SLC Home:

Here are five things you should keep out

1. Oil and Grease can cause Clogged Drains
   • Don’t dump that pan of bacon grease down the drain in your kitchen. While it might look like liquid now, as it cools it congeals into a solid sludge that will quickly build up in your pipes and prevent water flow.
2. Vegetable Peels and Egg Shells can Back-Up Drains
   • These foods are not something that can easily be broken down by your garbage disposal, and while the occasional accidental eggshell down the drain might not cause lasting problems, if you continue to put these items in the drain you will soon have a garbage disposal that is spitting those things back up at you in a soupy, backed-up mess. Eggshells in particular are problematic because the membrane on the inside of the shell will wrap around your garbage disposal blades.
3. Coffee Grounds can cause drains to not function correctly
   • While small and seemingly unobtrusive, coffee grounds down the drain will eventually build up as tiny sediment deposits in your pipes. This can lead to clogs and other water flow issues and require that you call an emergency plumber in Utah to help.
4. Pits, Seeds, and Bones can cause Obstructed Drains
   • This might seem like a no-brainer, but when you put those large pits down the drain they become little balls of destruction, pinballing back and forth inside your disposal and weakening the blade over time. Bones are also extremely hard and will damage your disposal almost immediately, leading to drain clogs.
5. Sticky Rice or Pasta can cause Plugged Drains
   • In small amounts, you can probably get away with putting a little bit of rice or pasta down the drain, but in bulk, you run the risk of putting something down there that will expand every time you turn on the water, and will eventually turn into a sticky mess inside your drain.

Fortunately, if you do mistakenly put one of these items down the drain, you can call a plumber from All Hours Plumbing, Drain Cleaning, Heating & Cooling—no matter the time of day or night—and they can help you unclog that drain so it won’t overflow.

For more clogged drain help:

Visit our friends over at This Old House.