Maybe you chew with your mouth open, or maybe you bite your fingernails. Perhaps you can’t help but point out the bad acting in the film you’re watching with your friends. While those close to you may not love these habits, they aren’t necessarily harmful. However, you may not have a friend to tell you about the bad habits that could be damaging the plumbing in your Montgomery, Alabama, home. So we’re going to be that friend. If you’re a perpetrator of these bad plumbing habits, you could be damaging your pipes and causing high utility bills:
Abusing Your Disposal
It may be convenient to wash everything on your dirty plates down the drain. But your garbage disposal isn’t a trash can. It isn’t built to handle many of the scraps you may throw down it. Maybe you’ve heard that pouring hot grease down the kitchen sink is fine as long as you run hot water and the disposal at the same time, but that’s not the case. That fat will congeal and form a layer inside your disposal. As a result, it’ll build until it becomes a harmful clog. In addition to hot grease, you also shouldn’t put fibrous foods, rice, pasta or coffee grounds down your sink.
Using Your Toilet as a Trash Can
Let’s go over this one more time: Your plumbing system isn’t a trash can. It can be convenient to toss wipes, kitty litter and feminine hygiene products down your toilet once you’re finished with them. But despite saying "flushable" on the packaging, many of these products can become problems for your plumbing. While toilet paper dissolves in water, these other products usually won’t. Therefore, it’s best you don’t take the chance of causing a bad blockage somewhere in your sewer line. Toss them in the trash and save your toilet for the biodegradable stuff.
Pouring Too Much Drain Cleaner
Drain cleaner is a quick and easy way to remove clogs in your pipes. But quick and easy isn’t always the best way. Most drain cleaners use powerful chemicals to remove those clogs. While the chemicals may not cause too much damage if you only use them every few years, using these cleaners too often will allow them to eat away your pipes. After a while, that damage will make your pipes more vulnerable to cracks.
Before using drain cleaner, try a plunger or other manual methods. If you need something more powerful, look for biological drain cleaners, which use enzymes and bacteria to organically dissolve the clog. As a result, they don’t harm your pipes.
Letting Hair Down the Drain
Many of us make a habit of shaving over the sink or in the shower and letting that hair go down the drain. Unfortunately, hair easily sticks to the soap deposits already clinging to the sides of your pipes. Those thick fibers can quickly create a large clog. In addition to changing where you shave, you can also put drain baskets in your shower and bathroom sink drains to catch hair before it has a chance to cause any problems.
Ignoring Minor Leaks
Whether leaks happen because of bad habits or bad luck, you need to take care of them quickly. It can be easy to ignore the occasional drip coming from your bathroom sink. But that leak can not only lead to high water bills. It can also result in greater pipe damage that may even cause the pipe to burst. The longer you leave a minor leak alone, the costlier your repairs will be in the future. Don’t wait to schedule plumbing maintenance.
Bad habits can be hard to kick. But the first step to ditching the bad habits that are damaging your plumbing is to recognize them. Put these habits behind you, and you’ll have a stronger and more efficient plumbing system. Should you have any plumbing problems, call Air Conditioning by Luquire at 334-230-5870.
Image provided by iStock
