As Thanksgiving approaches, plumbing and HVAC companies are preparing for what has become their busiest day of the year: the Friday after Thanksgiving, known in the industry as 'Brown Friday.' According to plumbing, sewer and drain service provider Roto-Rooter, the day after Thanksgiving sees a 50% spike in service calls, making it the busiest day for plumbers, as reported by KTVU FOX 2 last year. Roto-Rooter also notes a 21% increase in calls from Thursday through Sunday of the holiday weekend.
The cause is a house working harder than usual. Roto-Rooter says pipes and disposals are pushed to their limits with homes full of guests, extra showers and more kitchen use, and that greasy turkey drippings and food scraps add to the clogged drains plumbers see that weekend. Hot water is part of the same load. Water heater maker Rheem says additional guests and multiple showers in a day increase water heater demand, and that colder inlet water requires a longer heating cycle and higher wattage draw. The company puts the rise in water heater usage at 15-25% in the winter months.
For a Sanford household hosting relatives over the long weekend, all of that lands on one kitchen sink, one water heater and one sewer line in the space of a few days. A disposal that jams on Thursday afternoon, a guest bathroom toilet that will not clear, or showers that run cold by the third guest are the kinds of problems that tend to surface first.
"A kitchen sink that has been draining slowly all fall is usually the one that stops on Thanksgiving," said Adam Hagen, general manager at Comfort First Heating & Cooling. "The holiday does not create the problem so much as find it. Keeping grease and starchy scraps out of the drain, spacing out showers, and paying attention when more than one fixture gurgles at the same time will prevent most of the calls that come in that weekend."
Comfort First Heating & Cooling, founded in 2010, is a full-service HVAC, plumbing and generator company serving Sanford and the wider Triangle area. The company offers several tips to avoid holiday plumbing emergencies: pour cooled grease and turkey drippings into a can or jar and throw it away, as fats solidify in pipes and choke them; keep stringy, fibrous or starchy waste such as poultry skin, celery, potato peels and rice out of the garbage disposal, and run the disposal with water while feeding it scraps; put a plunger and a small wastebasket in each guest bathroom, and ask guests not to flush wet wipes, even ones labelled flushable; stagger showers and laundry loads across the day so the water heater has time to recover between uses; listen for a water heater that rumbles or pops, or hot water that runs out sooner than usual, and have it checked before guests arrive; and if two or more drains back up or gurgle at the same time, stop running water and call a plumber, since the main sewer line may be the cause.
Sanford homeowners can learn more about plumbing from Comfort First Heating & Cooling online or call (919) 295-3421. More information is available at yourcomfortfirst.com.
