This is the time of year when you have about five weeks of continual food (if you count Halloween, it’s more). If you are hosting any kind of holiday gathering, you need to be very aware of what is going down your drain, especially if the food going down your drain is a fat, oil or grease (FOG). Nothing clogs a drain faster or more effectively than too much FOG, and we know because the holiday season is one of our busiest for plumbing calls. Why is FOG so bad for your plumbing? Let’s take a look.
An Expert Clinger
There are a few problems with FOG that make it such an enemy of your drains. First, it goes down your drain easily when hot, giving the appearance of actually being flushed from your system – but it isn’t. Hot grease or fat cools rather quickly, and when it does so inside your piping, it clings to the inside of your pipes like barnacles cling to the bottom of a boat. You may think that washing any type of FOG down the drain with very hot water will do the trick. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case.
What hot water does is push the FOG further into the return side of your plumbing system, making it very likely to clog much further down the pipe. The result is usually a clog located deep inside your plumbing system. But once FOG is in your piping, it acts like a spider web. It’s sticky, clingy nature allows for particles of food to cling to it, making it not only a challenging clog, but a rather stinky one as well. The best way to avoid this kind of scenario with your holiday revelry is to make sure that FOG isn’t put down your drain in the first place. If it is, and you start to notice problems with drainage or foul odors, call the plumbing experts from Carney Plumbing Heating & Cooling and schedule a drain cleaning appointment for your home in Ambler, PA.