Summer is a time when water becomes more than just a practical thing. During the summertime, we fill kiddy pools, wash cars and more. This means water is used more often and at a variety of unusual times. It puts your faucets and drains under a heavy strain. Here are a few summer plumbing maintenance tips to help you avoid clogs and leaks as you enjoy summer.
Hire a Plumber for Any Piping Expansions
Some summer play items are best permanently piped in. These include hot tubs, large water fountains, and permanent water slides. Avoid hassles and messes by letting a pro expand your household plumbing to serve these outdoor additions. Then, you can relax knowing that they will have the plumbing stability needed for years of trouble-free use.
Drains Are Not Meant to Take Everything
This is more often seen in rental units than homes, but that doesn’t mean that this problem is limited to apartments. Simply put, it can be tempting to throw everything that seems to fit into a drain, down one. Unfortunately, if this includes inorganic materials, a clog is sure to come. Wrappings, plastic safety razor covers, dropped jewelry, and more have all been found in drains. They cannot biodegrade, nor can they make the bend around the trap. Instead, they just stay there and collect hair and other debris until the drain is clogged.
Grease is another thing that shouldn’t go down a drain. It ends up congealing somewhere within the system, resulting in a nasty “fatberg” that is quite hard to remove. To keep your drains healthy, only put water, used wash water, and the normal contents of your toilet down the appropriate outlets. Everything else, including anything made of plastic or an abundance of grease, must go in the garbage or recycling bin.
Turn Off the Water After Activities
Kids are often reminded to turn off the faucet, but distracted adults can sometimes forget to do so, too. The end result is that your drainage system is overloaded with far more water than it was meant to handle, and premature failure can result.
Leaving the water on can also cause a more immediate problem: flooding. Sinks that do not have an overflow drain – such as many kitchen sinks – will overflow and flood the floor within minutes if their stoppers are in place. This problem easily arises when the user is distracted. A ringing phone, for example, can draw the attention of someone who is filling the sink to do dishes. Always remember to turn the water off before doing anything else, even if it’s “just for a minute.”
Summer Homes Can Involve Surprises
When you leave a cottage or house inactive for months at a time, old pipe joints can become dry, loose, or otherwise weakened. If that happens, your summer home may present you with a geyser when you turn on the main valve to the house. Unfortunately, this problem can happen in an area that is not obvious, such as under the crawl space or out at the hose spigot.
To avoid costly flood damage, always do a quiet walk-through of your cottage after the water has been activated. Listen closely for sounds of spraying, pouring, or dripping. If you hear anything odd, investigate immediately! Look around as well; sometimes a problem will be out in the open.
Remember, the cost of a plumber is far less than the cost of repairing structural damage from unwanted water that you did not spot or attend to right away. Call for one immediately if the pipes in your summer cottage are not doing what they should.
For help with all of your summer plumbing, be sure to contact Kew Forest Plumbing. We’ll be glad to help.