The day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, is actually one of the busiest days of the year for plumbers. It’s estimated that plumbers receive approximately 50% more service calls on Black Friday. We’ll go over the most common problems and how you can avoid them. We think Black Friday should be a day for half-priced televisions and not plumbing emergencies, so follow our advice to save yourself the headaches.
Why are there more plumbing issues on Black Friday?
A couple of key factors seem to cause more service calls on the day after Thanksgiving, including:
- Careless waste disposal. This is the biggest contributing factor to this plumbing phenomenon. Thanksgiving dinner is a big event that requires a lot of effort. You may not be thinking about your pipes before you put your turkey scraps down the drain, but you should if you want to avoid problems. Starchy vegetables like potatoes, celery, carrots can do a number on your pipes. Put too much of these down the garbage disposal, and you’re looking at a major clog. Likewise, fats such as turkey scraps, gravy and leftover oils also wreak havoc on the plumbing. We recommend attempting to empty all of these wastes into your garbage can rather than the disposal or drain. Please do not attempt to flush any large food wastes down the toilet when you can’t fit them down the drain. We’ve seen horror stories of flushed leftover turkey clogging toilets and causing major backups. Trust us and just use the trash can whenever possible.
- More house guests. Thanksgiving dinner also means more people than usual will be in your home. You may even have family or friends staying overnight or throughout the weekend. This large increase in usage can tax a plumbing system past its breaking point, especially if you aren’t careful about waste disposal on Thanksgiving! More people lead to more showers, toilet flushing and laundry loads. You can help offset this problem by making sure to not be careless about food waste, and spacing out water use the best you can. This may mean not having multiple showers running at a time or delaying your dishwasher and laundry loads to off-peak plumbing hours.
The reason plumbers are so busy on Black Friday rather than Thanksgiving itself is that residents are likely to put off a call to a plumber until after the holiday. After a long day of work getting dinner on the table, the last thing people want to do is have a plumber come in to fix a drain. Whatever the case is, we’re sure this Black Friday will be busy.
Bieg Plumbing has served the St. Louis area for nearly 60 years, and we’re thankful to have earned your trust as a plumbing authority. Whether it’s turkey day or not, you can count on us to fix your plumbing issues quickly. We guarantee high-quality work, so contact us any time you’re experiencing a problem.
Turkey scraps down the drain got you stuck? Call in the red truck!
