When you have spent hours grocery shopping, cleaning and cooking in anticipation of receiving your guests, you may have not even have given a thought to your plumbing. Whether you are enjoying a holiday celebration with your friends or are hosting a family gathering, having more people in your home does increase the possibility of
plumbing problems and emergencies. Here are just some of the common plumbing issues you may experience when you have guests and what you can do to mitigate the risk.
Bathroom Issues:
More people in your home obviously means more people using your bathrooms. Clogged toilets can happen at any time, but they are far more common if you have additional people in your home. You may be hosting children who don’t know that they shouldn’t try to flush their toys, baby wipes or masses of toilet paper. This can mean instead of emptying properly after each flush; water begins to back up. If you don’t spot this quickly, you could find that the clog will cause your toilet to overflow into your bathroom, causing water and waste to flood your floor.
Overnight guests are also likely to want to use your shower, which can increase the amount of water, soap scum and hair being washed down the drain, allowing a clog to develop.
Fortunately, you can dramatically reduce the risk of a clog causing chaos while you are entertaining with a little preventative maintenance. Clogs rarely develop overnight; they are simply expedited with more people using the bathroom. A professional plumber can check your drains to ensure that they are free of obstructions and minimize the risk of a backup.
Kitchen Problems:
Almost every scenario for entertaining people in your home involves extra food preparation. This increases the amount of use on your kitchen sink as more hands are washed, and greater amounts of food are rinsed. This also allows for more debris to be washed down your kitchen sink drain. Soap scum, grease, and food particles can combine to compromise the drain and your
garbage disposal function. Additionally, unknowing guests may accidentally allow inappropriate materials to be washed down the drain, causing the drain to become blocked or your garbage disposal to stop working.
Again, a little preventative maintenance can significantly reduce the risk of a problem developing. With a little care and attention, you can ensure that your kitchen drains are free of debris to avoid water slowly draining when your sink is needed the most.
Laundry Room Troubles:
If you are entertaining guests, you are likely to see an increase in your laundry loads. Visitors who are staying for several nights may need to do a load of laundry before they leave. You will have extra bedding to wash, and the extra food preparation will generate more dish towels, tablecloths and dish cloths to wash. This will not only cause the amount of lint produced to increase, but you could also notice a drop in your appliance performance as more scale develops inside your washing machine.
If you do have particularly hard water, you may also be a little embarrassed that your loads of laundry don’t look and feel completely clean. This can be addressed with a water softener. Softened water not only eliminates the buildup of scale, but you may also find that you use less detergent and achieve cleaner, fresher laundry.
By Giovanni Longo President Flood Brothers Plumbing
Giovanni Longo is a 3rd generation master plumber who has been practicing his craft and trade in the greater Los Angeles area for well over a decade and a half. A plumbing and hydraulics-engineering innovator, Giovanni’s particular world-class expertise focuses on dealing with challenging sewer system designs as well as resolving complex commercial and residential draining issues. As a certified Flood Mitigation expert, he is also well versed in a wide variety of water damage and remediation solution.
