Mid-October is the signal for the beginning of the “Holiday Home Stretch” for the end of the year. Major holidays start piling up, and many of holiday celebrations involve food. Plenty o’ food. Although this means fun times with family and friends and a delicious range of delights from main courses of turkey to piles of candy, there’s one part of your home that goes through a major test at this time of year: the garbage disposal. In fact, calls about garbage disposal problems are among the most frequent calls that plumbers receive during the last three months of the year.
Yes, we’d love to have your business if your garbage disposal needs to be fixed in a hurry. But we’d also like to help you avoid this. So here are some tips to help your garbage disposal through the end of the year!
- Perhaps start the season with a new disposal: If you have an old disposal that’s already been giving you trouble this year, the best way to prep for the holiday onslaught is to reward yourself with a new disposal installation.
- Keep bones out of the disposal: Meat bones are a major part of many holiday feasts—and they should never go down the disposal! Any food waste that isn’t something you can chew with your teeth (and that includes unpopped popcorn kernels) isn’t something your garbage disposal can “chew” either. Throw this waste into a composting bucked or send it straight to the trash.
- Don’t pour grease down the drains: Grease, as well as fats and oils, are leftover cooking products you’ll see plenty of during the holidays. Don’t let their liquid form trick you—they won’t stay liquid when they cool off. If you pour them down the disposal or the other drains, the gunk build-up can spell disaster.
- Rice and fibrous vegetables also aren’t for the disposal: This is a bit sneaky as well, since you might imagine a disposal won’t have a problem with rice, celery, asparagus, and onions. But rice absorbs water and swells, making it easy to jam a disposal, and the stringy and tough strands of fibrous vegetables will easily get entangled in the mechanical parts of the disposal.
Ken Neyer Plumbing, Inc. serves Uptown Cincinnati, OH and the rest of the Cincinnati Area. We’re a full-service plumbing company ready to see to your needs this season!