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Protecting your home from holiday plumbing horrors, because prices can drain you

Black Friday may be a big day for shoppers and retailers. But you know who is just as busy? Plumbers. According to Roto-Rooter, it's the busiest day of the year.

Black Friday may be a big day for shoppers and retailers. But you know who is just as busy? Plumbers. According to Roto-Rooter, it's the busiest day of the year. Calls jump fifty percent the day after Thanksgiving.

Whether it's backed up sinks from all the cooking and clean-up, to toilets and showers from family sleepovers...the holidays can be a disaster waiting to happen. And the last thing you want to give thanks for this holiday is finding a plumber willing to unclog your sink, shower or heaven forbid...
your toilet.

Sal Sidoti of Sal’s Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Sewer describes one of his craziest calls,"There was almost a full pound of spaghetti in someone’s drain where we had to take it apart in the basement."

And that's what he says sinks most people...putting things down the drain that aren't supposed to be there. Thins like potato peels, skin and bones from meats, and fats and cooking oils which are the worst.

"It turns into petroleum jelly in your drain and water doesn’t wash it down, he says.

Which takes us to the troubles that come "after" dinner...the toilets, where toilet paper is one of only three things that should be in there. Leave a garbage basket in there so guests don't feel they have to flush something they shouldn't

With overnight guests, your showers can get clogged too Sidotti says.

"The holes are too big and hair gets down there and before you know it you're standing in a puddle in the shower.”

But that's easy to stop with one of those plastic strainers.

What's not so easy....is stopping the strain on your water heater. So have your guests wait fifteen minutes before taking turns. With all the cooking and cleaning already going on, your water heater will be doing double duty. If it goes, you'll be shelling out for a lot more than Black Friday Deals.

“The stress on a hot water heater can cause them to start leaking and the bottoms fall out if there is any kind of age,” Sidoti says.

It could cost you about three hundred dollars over the holiday weekend…just to unclog a drain. And

if you have old pipes, don't try to get away with over the counter de-cloggers because they can eat away at them. If you can, try and wait until after the weekend. Although Sal says, he doesn’t consider Black Friday a holiday, so fixing your drain will run you about $179.

And that's One For The Money.

Sal’s Heating, Cooling Plumbing and Sewer
http://salsheatandcool.com/

How not to get hosed by a plumber

https://www.moneytalksnews.com/10-sneaky-plumbers-tricks-the-trade/

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