20 Dec Avoiding Holiday Headaches by Disposing of FOG and Preventing Frozen Pipes
Properly disposing of fats, oils, and grease (FOG) while cooking and a few easy steps to help prevent frozen pipes during frigid temperatures can help avoid some holiday surprises this year!
Drawing of grease clogging pipes
Fats, Oils, and Grease (FOG)
The holidays bring about a lot of cooking for large gatherings, and that typically leads to a lot of leftover fats, oils, and grease that all needs to be disposed of properly. These materials can cause major damage both to residential plumbing and the community’s wastewater system. Properly disposing of these materials can prevent costly repairs to either your home or across Carrboro and Chapel Hill for major system repairs.
FOG leftover after cooking can harden and cause a blockage in your plumbing if put down the sink drain. Set those fats, oils, and grease to the side and let it cool, then you can just throw that away – or reuse it when you’re cooking later if you’d like to.
If you put that FOG down the drain, it’s going to cool and harden. Then it will begin building up on your plumbing and create a clog either in your private plumbing or maybe eventually in the community sewer system, where it could be another sewer overflow. Following these disposal tips in your own home or business helps protect you and the community as a whole.
Three Ps
Rags pulled after causing blockage in pump
For flushing toilets, the easiest thing to remember is to only flush the Three Ps; that’s pee, poop, and toilet paper.
Sanitary wipes have grown in popularity in recent years, but please throw those away instead of flushing those down the toilet. The sanitary wipes don’t break down in the sewer system like toilet paper does, and then they combine with other wipes, or hair, or dental floss, or anything else someone may have flushed.
These things all combine together then and create a blockage in the pipe. With wastewater, that means that we’re either going to have a pipe break from that clog or have a sewer overflow out of a manhole because that wastewater can’t get around the blockage. Those sewer overflows are costly to fix and bad for the environment, so we need everyone doing their part and only flushing the correct things down the toilet.
Frozen Pipes
Cold temperatures can also cause problems for plumbing because the water can freeze inside of that line, which will either stop the flow of water until it is thawed or cause a broken pipe.
Ahead of any cold stretches, a few small measures may go a long way to preventing water pipe issues in your home, including disconnecting any outdoor hoses and wrapping outdoor spigots in some cloth for protection from the colder weather.
An important step in preventing broken pipes is to keep the temperature well-regulated, if possible. You can open some cabinets to let warmer air get right to the pipes – especially if it’s against an exterior wall. If you have a crawl space, you can insulate those pipes some as well. Another older trick is to leave a small drip going at a sink so that water keeps moving through the pipes and doesn’t have a chance to freeze.