As you prep for your holiday meal this year, want to avoid nasty kitchen sink clogs and problems with your garbage disposal?
We’ll show you how.
Don’t treat your garbage disposal like a garbage disposal
The name garbage disposal seems to encourage people to put everything down it.
Don’t!
The garbage disposal is there in case food scraps end up in the drain, it’s not an alternative to a trash can.
Throw scraps from food prep into the garbage instead of the sink, and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache.
Definitely avoid putting these foods down the drain:
- Fats, oils and grease. It’ll stick to the inside of your pipes, clogging your pipes like plaque clogs arteries. And it’ll stink when it starts decomposing in the pipes.
- Carrot peels, celery and potato skins. Stringy foods like these can wrap around the garbage disposal’s blades, causing it to fail.
- Bones, peach pits and other hard items. Obviously, these things can do real damage to your disposal and also get stuck in your pipes.
- Chicken skin. This wins for plumbers’ least favorite thing to find in your drain because it really stinks when it’s in there for awhile. Plus, chicken skin gets stuck in your pipes and on your disposal’s blades.
When using the garbage disposal, run more water than you think you need to
One of the biggest causes of kitchen sink clogs is that people don’t flush enough water through the disposal after using it. And that’s easy to prevent.
Whenever you run your disposal, do this:
- Always, always, always run water down the drain whenever the disposal is running.
- Keep the disposal on for 10-15 seconds after there are no more grinding sounds.
- Shut off the disposal, but keep the water running for another 30 seconds to a minute.
This will help keep your pipes and disposal free from food buildup.
Keep a good plumber’s number handy
Even when you do everything right, there’s a chance you could have a kitchen sink clog from things you can’t control (like tree roots in your pipes). So keep a good plumber’s name and number handy (preferably ours!). That way, you’ll always be prepared.
Red Cap Plumbing serves the plumbing needs of the entire Tampa Bay, Florida area. Need a repair or just want to say hey? Contact us online or call 813-963-3056.
