Avoid Home Drain Backups with These Plumbing Tips

Every day, the average Houston homeowner produces many gallons of wastewater. When you take a shower, flush your toilet, run your dishwasher, or do a load of laundry, the dirty water will flow into your plumbing and eventually exit your home via the main sewer line. If your pipes are clogged, however, the wastewater may pool in your sink or even in your tub faster than it can flow down the drain. In extreme cases, the drains may become so backed up that the wastewater never reaches the sewer line. Follow the tips below to keep your drains flowing and avoid messy clogs that will require a plumber in your Houston home.

Use Hair Traps in Your Bathroom Drains

Everyone sheds a few hairs in the course of normal bathing and grooming.
While one or two hairs will not clog your drains, over time masses of hair can get caught in your pipes, and together with other sources of grease and grime these hairs can clog your pipes. Inexpensive hair traps sit in your bathtub or sink drains and catch stray hairs, keeping them out of your drains.

Put Scrap Traps in Your Kitchen Sink

Even if you have a garbage disposal or a dishwasher, crumbs of solid food will still find their way into your kitchen drains and from there into your plumbing. Over time, those small bits of sauce or tiny breadcrumbs that you rinse off your dirty plates can become lodged inside your pipes, where they will eventually block the passage of water. Using a scrap trap in the kitchen, just like using a hair trap in the bathroom, allows you to catch solid waste and put it in the trash where it belongs.

Be Careful with Your Garbage Disposal

Garbage disposals cannot shred every type of food waste. Even if you have a brand new unit, do not put items such as potato peels, asparagus stems, celery stalks, or other tough vegetable waste in your disposal, because these items can cause the blades to jam. Keep hard items such as fruit pits and bones out of the disposal as well. Use a scrap trap even in the sink that has the disposal, so you can choose which items to shred and which to simply discard in the trash can.

Properly Dispose of All Grease

Generally, avoid rinsing any liquids except for water down your kitchen drains. Leftover grease such as canola or olive oil is especially harmful, since it can coat the inside of your drains quickly and cause plumbing backups. The toilet is not an effective way to dispose of grease either, as it drains into the same pipes as the rest of your bathroom fixtures. Keep a can or jar in your kitchen to hold used cooking grease, and when it gets full tightly seal it and throw it in the trash.

If you do experience a drain clog, you should call a plumber in Houston immediately before overflowing water or sewage damage your home. To read more about drain care and other general plumbing tips, visit our main website or our Ask the Expert page.