5 Things You Should Never Put Down Your Drain

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 Utah plumber. Here are five things you should keep out of your drains.

Oil and Grease

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.

Vegetable Peels and Egg Shells

These foods are not something that can easily be broken down by your garbage disposal, and while the occasional accidental egg shell 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.

Coffee Grounds

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.

Pits, Seeds, and Bones

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.

Sticky Rice or Pasta

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.