As the festive season draws nearer, we’re loosening our belts by two notches to make room for some of the tasty goodness to come! Roast chicken and turkey, casseroles and lamb, gammon and roast vegetables and crispy potato smothered in gravy. Malva pudding and custard, with ice-cream or samp or decadent chocolate mousse, served with freshly brewed coffee or an icy dom Pedro.
So what do Christmas lunches have to do with that ghastly lump of lard and poop up there? Everything. Christmas has everything to do with fatbergs, so we’re here to gift you with the knowledge of how to prevent clogged drains this festive season.
How blockages and fatbergs grow…
And they do grow – believe us, we’ve seen it. Like monsters morphing within your home drainage, they grow.
As the name suggests, fatbergs and other drain blockages consist largely of congealed fat and grease that stick to other items snagged within pipes and drains, such as wet wipes, human hair, paper towels, and even food.
As more fat and food and oil is poured into the system, and more foreign objects find their way down drains and toilet flushes, your own personal fatberg monster grows and grows, eventually clogging up your drain, or worse, the entire neighbourhood drainage system.
The result? Raw sewage overflowing into the streets or back into homes.
Could this Christmas blog get any grosser?
Yes, it could! Here is a video of a huge fatberg in the UK that took 9 weeks to break down!
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4QKPqgubA&pbjreload=10)
How to Avoid Creating Your Own Personal Fatberg Monster
It’s surprisingly simple really – here are our top tips on how to prevent clogged drains this festive season:
- Don’t drain oil, margarine or fat: When these cool inside your pipes, they congeal and get stuck in your system. Rather pour the slightly cooled oils into an old margarine or ice cream tub, and throw it away once it’s full.
- Scrape your plates: You may be tempted to rinse small leftovers down the drain, but even these can contribute to blockages when combined with congealed fats and other foreign items.
- Throw away coffee grounds: Although it seems harmless to rinse the coffee grounds from your coffee plunger, coffee is dense and gravelly and never dissolves. Joining forces with a developing fatberg, ground coffee can add to the cement nature of this underground beast.
- Install a fat-trap: Particularly if you’re operating a commercial kitchen, a fat-trap does exactly what the name implies!
- The hot-water myth: Don’t believe that pouring boiling water down your drain will dissolve and move all that lard along. At best, it might sludge it’s way a little further into your system and congeal up again.
- Bathroom Etiquette: There are three things that toilets are made for; Pee, poop and toilet paper. The items that cause the worst blockages in drains are wet wipes, sanitary items, paper towels, condoms, and odd items of clothing such as hosiery and underwear.
It’s Not a Magic Portal
Your toilet and household drains are not magic portals to another world… it all goes somewhere and becomes someone’s problem!
This festive season, and new year, why not start a new tradition of respecting your plumbing by throwing kitchen waste where it belongs: in the trash!
If it’s too late and your drain has a monster, give us a call, and we’ll be there in a jiffy!