Comfort First Heating & Cooling is urging Sanford households to prepare their plumbing and water heating systems ahead of Thanksgiving, when a full house puts unusual strain on kitchen drains, toilets and water heaters. The Sanford-based plumbing and HVAC company notes that the day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for the plumbing industry, a date tradespeople refer to as Brown Friday.
According to plumbing, sewer and drain service provider Roto-Rooter, the day after Thanksgiving sees a 50% spike in service calls, KTVU FOX 2 reported last year. Roto-Rooter says it also records a 21% boost in calls from Thursday through Sunday of the holiday weekend. The cause, according to the company, is a house working harder than usual: pipes and disposals are pushed to their limits with homes full of guests, extra showers and heavier kitchen use, while greasy turkey drippings and food scraps add to the clogged drains plumbers encounter that weekend.
Hot water carries part of the same load. Water heater maker Rheem says additional guests and multiple showers in a day increase water heater demand, and that colder inlet water requires a longer heating cycle and higher wattage draw. Rheem puts the rise in water heater usage at 15-25% during the winter months. For a Sanford household hosting relatives over the long weekend, those pressures converge on one kitchen sink, one water heater and one sewer line within a few days. A disposal that jams on Thursday afternoon, a guest bathroom toilet that will not clear, or showers that run cold by the third guest are the kinds of problems that tend to surface first.
"A kitchen sink that has been draining slowly all fall is usually the one that stops on Thanksgiving," said Adam Hagen, general manager at Comfort First Heating & Cooling. "The holiday does not create the problem so much as find it. Keeping grease and starchy scraps out of the drain, spacing out showers, and paying attention when more than one fixture gurgles at the same time will prevent most of the calls that come in that weekend."
The company recommends pouring cooled grease and turkey drippings into a can or jar and throwing it away, since fats solidify in pipes and choke them. Stringy, fibrous or starchy waste such as poultry skin, celery, potato peels and rice should stay out of the garbage disposal, which should run with water while being fed scraps. A plunger and a small wastebasket in each guest bathroom help, and guests should be asked not to flush wet wipes, even ones labelled flushable. Staggering showers and laundry loads across the day gives the water heater time to recover between uses, and a water heater that rumbles or pops, or hot water that runs out sooner than usual, should be checked before guests arrive. If two or more drains back up or gurgle at the same time, homeowners should stop running water and call a plumber, since the main sewer line may be the cause.
Sanford homeowners can learn more about plumbing from Comfort First Heating & Cooling, a full-service HVAC, plumbing and generator company founded in 2010 that serves Sanford and the wider Triangle area. More information about the company is available at yourcomfortfirst.com.
