Thanksgiving is a time for large gatherings with loved ones over long meals –– but it’s also a day where your kitchen sinks and toilets will get tested in ways they never have before.
Plumbers know this all too well.
“We call it the notorious ‘Brown Friday,’” said Dave Jones, a Cincinnati-based master plumber and vice president of strategic initiatives for Roto-Rooter, a plumbing company. “Lots of clogged drains ... We definitely see a spike in calls compared to just about any other time of the year.“
The more people you have over at your home, the more likely someone will dump out food or waste in ways your appliances can not handle. Here are the two biggest culprits of “Brown Friday” –– and how to prevent it from happening to you this holiday season.
Clogged Kitchen Sinks
Potatoes are the co-stars in many Thanksgiving dishes, and in Jones’ experience, “Potato skins are really the biggest culprit [of Brown Friday] that we see.”
Every year, Jones sees people dump these stringy, fibrous vegetables down their sinks and then back up their drains as the tubers accumulate. With potato skins, the “garbage disposal can take it, but typically it’s the drain lines that wind up being an issue,” Jones noted. The potato skins will often congeal and become “sticky, almost like glue” inside your pipes, he said.
“It’s an easy fix –– just don’t put [potato skins] in the drain,” Jones said. When you do this, “that is almost a guarantee that you’re going to have some kind of issue.“
And it’s not just potatoes that are problems for your kitchen sink. “Sometimes people put so much food in there that the [garbage disposal] blades literally jam up,” said Philadelphia-based plumber Kelly Ireland.
“The No. 1 call” that plumbers mostly get during this time is due to clogged kitchen sinks, Ireland said. And it’s “usually the mashed potatoes, the stuffing, all the fats from the turkey and the gravies.”
Clogged Toilets
When you have many guests over, these guests might not follow your preferred protocol when it comes to using the toilet. It’s no surprise that clogged toilets are “the other biggest call [after Thanksgiving],” according to Ireland.
“If you have guests over, and you keep any type of wipes or paper towels in your bath in your bathroom, take them out, because people will flush them,” Ireland said.
Even if they are marketed as flushable, flushable wipes “should never be flushed,” Ireland said, because they might make it through the toilet, but “you have pipes beyond the toilet.”
“And if you have older pipes ... they might be rough on the insides, and then they’ll catch that [wipe], and then it’ll start to just build up,” Ireland said.
How To Prevent A ‘Brown Friday’
Brown Friday is thankfully not inevitable. In fact, this kind of mess is easily avoidable if you are careful.
For one, be judicious about what you dump in your garbage disposal if you have one attached to your kitchen sink.
Ideally, avoid dumping turkey bones or any stringy, fibrous fruit or vegetable like celery stalks or banana peels down your garbage disposal. Jones said you should run the disposal with a little food at a time and running water, and then use “plenty of water afterwards” too. This way, “you can make sure that stuff washes down the drain properly,” he noted.
When in doubt, consider throwing it out as trash. “Do not ever use the garbage disposal as a food trash can,” Ireland warned.
During large gatherings, it’s normal for many people to be unfamiliar with how your kitchen and toilet work. To help, remove clog-causing temptations out of sight for guests. Jones recommended that if you’re having company over, you should remove what’s on top of your kitchen countertops or bathroom sink that a guest could accidentally use or dump down your drains.
Both Jones and Ireland said to move toilet wipes out of sight, for example.
“If you know you’re going to have a lot of kids over, maybe take the candle off the back of the toilet and the little spray perfumes or whatever little trinkets, because a kid might just knock them ... in the toilet,” Ireland said.
And if you want to prep your appliances for the big day, try pouring a biodegradable enzyme product down your drain to coat your drains. It will help you “start breaking down some of the organics that are building up in the drain already,” Jones said.
Plumbing issues are usually “a compounding problem,” Ireland said. The large gathering is what “just puts you over the edge.”
You want your holidays to be memorable because of the quality time you share with your family; you don’t want them to be memorable because of a plumbing emergency. These preventative steps can take a few more minutes of work to arrange, but they are a necessity if you want to avoid unnecessary holiday stress.