Avoiding drain drama
Plumbing problems can cause chaos for people, property and pipes, but “drain drama” can be avoided with the proper precautions.
Doyle James, president of Mr. Rooter Plumbing in Waco, Texas, spoke with Apartment Therapy to share some tips on how to stretch the lifespan of your pipes. To begin with, only things that drains are designed for should ever go down them; everything else should be put in the garbage.
Hair, as anyone with a lot of it will tell you, can cause clogs in the shower drain. Those who wash clippings into the sink or toilet are at risk of a similar fate, said James. Dental floss is equally hazardous to your pipes, he noted.
Wet wipes should never touch the toilet, even if they’re labelled as flushable, James said. In a 2019 study of 101 brands of single-use wipes by Barry Orr, master’s student at Toronto’s Ryerson University, not a single one was found to be flushable despite 23 being labelled as such.
Wipes were tested under the same conditions as they ’ would experience in a water treatment plant, but none dissolved as standard toilet paper would, Orr found.
“The report findings showed that none of the wipe samples fell apart or dispersed enough to safely pass through the sewer system without a risk of clogging or causing damage to infrastructure,” Orr explained.
The same rule applies to tampons and pads, James said. Those products can get snagged on something in the sewer and lead to a clog, which has to be removed by a professional and can be quite costly. Your best bet for each of these products is to toss them in the trash, not the toilet.
The ways different species dispose of waste are too different for one unified system, so only get rid of human stuff in a human toilet. When your cat uses a litter box, sand and clay in the kitty litter will stick to anything left behind, which can cause serious problems if flushed.
“The clay and silica clumping litters are designed to absorb moisture and create clumps, which turn into large clogs almost immediately once they enter your pipes,” James said.
In the kitchen, don’t rinse hot fats or grease down the sink.
“In a way, pipes are a lot like arteries,” James said. “When fats flush the pipes and cool off, they freeze and congeal, building up like cholesterol in arteries.”
Instead, dump the liquid into a container, let it cool off and harden, then scrape it into a compost bin or garbage, he advises.