The plumbing industry is full of myths and old wives tales about what’s right and wrong. For many homeowners, this has led you to clean your garbage disposal with citrus, turn off the water heater when you’re at work, and running cooking grease over cold water before throwing it down the drain.
The fact of the matter is, many of these practices are actually completely wrong. In many cases, it leads to emergency plumbing repairs, that easily could have been avoided. One fixture that often gets the short end of the stick in your home is the toilet. Part of your daily routine, you rely on your toilet to keep your home free of waste.
However, more often than not, homeowners treat their toilet as garbage disposal, flushing anything and everything with no cause for concern. These bad habits could actually lead you to some serious plumbing concerns. Read on to learn what bad habits you’ve formed and how they may be affecting your plumbing.
5 Things You Should Never Flush Down The Toilet
Contrary to popular beliefs, your toilet may not be able to hand everything you throw at it. Some of the common materials people flush include:
Baby wipes- Hair
- Food (or cooking grease)
- Floss
- Cat litter
- Q-tips
Just because they go down the drain doesn’t mean they should be there. Even the smallest materials like floss can wreak havoc on your pipes and your septic tank.
How Toilet Damage Can Affect Your Home
While these items may easily flush down the toilet, they may actually be lurking further in your plumbing.
The problem with flushing items that are not biodegradable down the drain is that they take a long time to break down - or they don’t at all, leading to clogged toilets.
These same materials create large blockages in your plumbing, which can put a major damper on your plumbing. While small blockages may be addressed with your handy plunger, others may require heavy-duty plumbing tools like a hydro-jetter. While they’ll fix your problem, they could also be costing you in repairs.
Avoiding Costly Repairs
It’s common for a wad of baby wipes to completely stop the flow of water in your home. The problem may even be severe enough to need professional drain cleaning.
By limiting what you flush down the toilet, you could easily protect yourself and your pipes in the process. If your home relies on a septic tank for sewage, you need to be even more careful.
Septic tanks are susceptible to damage because any foreign materials can obstruct the flow to your leach field. Before long, you could find yourself with a lawn full of sewage. A replacement septic tank could be in the thousands - and is not always a viable option for homeowners.
The easiest way to avoid issues is to pay attention to what you’re flushing. And if your little ones are already using the restroom, be sure to educate them as well. When your family proactively protects your plumbing, emergency plumbing repairs can always be avoided.