Plumbers make a good living. They charge a lot per hour and job, so preventing a call to a plumber is a very smart household move. It does not take much to care for the drains in your kitchen and bathroom.
With a little effort, there really should never be a reason to call a plumber and pay their high prices. Here are a few easy things you and your family can do to protect your drains and some tricks if your drains get blocked.
Flush Out Drains
If you are not familiar with your drains, then you may want to do a flush out to begin fresh. This means using a septic safe fluid like draino or something of the sort for a refresher. If you have any doubt to the strength of your pipes, putting a chemical may or may not harm the pipes.
At this point, if a chemical will drastically harm one of your pipes, then they would eventually have caused problems anyway. Once you start at a fresh point, the next step is to ensure that nothing gets down any of your drains that should not go down them.
Put Removeable Covers on Drains
One of the biggest reasons for blocked drains is something falling down the drain that shouldn’t be there, like too much hair, toys, food, sanitary napkins, and even plastic cups and silverware. Everyone should know that only water, soap, shampoo, and conditioner are what should be going through the shower drain.
Only water and soap should go through the kitchen sink drain and just soap and say shaving cream and water goes down the bathroom sink. To help make sure that these items are the only things to go down the drains is put a drain cover over the drain so that anything larger than soap and water is caught. This way you can clean the drain out and throw any big stuff in the garbage.
When in Doubt, Throw it Out
Make sure everyone knows that most everything needs to be thrown out and not be put in any drain. This will help to ensure the safety and life of your drain system. Trees and branches can sometimes potentially harm the pipes.
In the winter time, freezing can make pipes burst. Pipes do expand and contract with temperature. Depending on where you live this is a concern. There are also other reasons for drain problems. Read more here for other drain issues that might help you in the future. The best thing to remember with drains is when in doubt, throw it out.
Keep Pipes Up To Date
Keeping pipes up to date is also good. It is not fun to have to deal with a dirty gunky pipe system. Plumbers will just charge for the messier the job is. Messy pipes mean more time to fix. This means more money out of your pocket. If you can just train yourself and your family to only let soap products and water down the drains, then you should do good over time.
The garbage is so much more capable of handling the big stuff. Even throwing food in the garbage instead of overloading the garbage disposal. Even though the garbage disposal chops up the stuff, the food can still build up down the line in a pipe that may be built up with gunk already causing a bigger headache.
Keeping your pipes and drains clean is essential. You can always have a plunger and plumber’s snake handy for smaller jobs. The whole point is to not have to call a plumber over time. The more preventative you can be with drains, the less it will cost you over time.
