Are you hosting your family's Thanksgiving celebration? If so, you probably have a list of chores that need to be completed to prepare your home for your guests. While most people spend time cleaning their house, purchasing additional food, and gathering treasured Thanksgiving recipes, they don't put a lot of thought into preparing their home's plumbing for the festivities. The last thing you want is to have a major plumbing issue arise while you're trying to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. So check out these tips to learn what to do to help prevent random plumbing problems from occurring during the holidays.

Prevent Clogged Toilets

While your immediate family may know not to flush anything other than toilet paper down your toilet, it's not something that is considered common sense for everyone. You can't control what people flush down your toilet, but you can arrange your bathroom in hopes to prevent mishaps.

  • Make sure you have extra rolls of toilet paper in plain sight so your guests aren't prompted to use and flush things such as baby wipes, napkins, and paper towels.
  • Place a basket of personal hygiene items out for your guests to use if needed.
  • Make sure your bathroom trash can is sitting within plain site to prevent guests from flushing trash down the toilet.
  • Tape a sign near your toilet reminding guests not to flush anything other than toilet paper.

Adjust Your Hot Water Heater Settings

If you'll have overnight guests for Thanksgiving, you should consider increasing the temperature on your hot water heater. This way, everyone needs to use cold water to offset the heat in their shower. By using more cold water to shower, your guests are using less hot water, so you should have plenty of hot water reserved in the tank for everyone to shower without running the hot water heater consistently. 

Avoid Kitchen Sink Clogs

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner often requires multiple people to be working in the kitchen at the same time. So you need to go over your kitchen rules with anyone who is helping you cook. If you're having problems with your dishwasher, avoid using it. Your dishwasher drains through your garbage disposal, and you don't want your sink to get clogged. Additionally, make sure everyone working in your kitchen knows what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to garbage disposal usage. You don't want your guests using your garbage disposal to dispose of turkey bones, large portions of food, or anything else that could damage the disposal and clog your sink.

A lot of work goes into planning and preparing Thanksgiving dinner, and nothing can wreck the party like a major plumbing issue. So take the time to prepare your home's plumbing and educate your guests on proper use so that you don't have to worry. Contact a company like A Absolute Plumbing & Heating for more tips.

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