Nov 21, 2022 5 min read

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The holiday season may be called the most wonderful time of the year, but for plumbers, it’s can be one of the busiest.

The primary reason: Holidays involve big meals and family get-togethers.

Food, and plenty of it, goes down the kitchen drain and garbage disposal. Drains clog, garbage disposals break, toilets overflow. Emergency calls are placed to the local plumber.

“People put the wrong stuff down there because they’re in a hurry and they’re not paying attention,” said Joe Bossong, owner of Bossong Plumbing in Washington.

Drippings from the Thanksgiving turkey may go down the drain in liquid form, but they solidify, causing a narrowing of the pipe. Rice and pasta swell when introduced to water, breaking down into a starchy gel and clogging pipes. Add in some poultry skin, dressing, vegetables and maybe a bone or two, and a sewer or drain clog of monumental proportions may be the end result.

Mark Pacilla, owner of McVehil Plumbing, Heating, Air Conditioning and Supply Co. in Washington, said his staff tries to attend to calls as soon as possible.

“We have enough plumbers to do a lot of work, but it’s difficult to get to everybody,” he said. “We try to schedule compassionately. If somebody has water coming through the ceiling, we try to schedule them first.”

Henry Elnar, general manager of McKean Plumbing and Heating in Washington, said any issue around the holidays adds to the urgency of getting that issue rectified.

“I’m not sure if the calls technically track up, but the urgency level sure seems like it does,” he said. “There are less calls that say, ‘Hey I was thinking about a project, let’s start it on Dec. 23.’ That doesn’t usually happen. It’s usually people realizing, ‘I have a house full of people, please help.'”

In fact, the day after Thanksgiving is referred to as “Brown Friday” in the plumbing business.

Paul Abrams, Roto Rooter spokesman, said the company sees a 50% increase in calls on that day.

“Thanksgiving isn’t particularly busy for us,” Abrams said. “It’s the day after. The three days after Thanksgiving get pretty darn busy. You have a lot of people with house guests. It’s kind of a recipe for disaster because anytime you put all of those people in one home, you get extra toilet flushes, you have a big meal prepared in the kitchen. They use the garbage disposal and often put too much of something down there. The guys that work at Roto Rooter know better than to ask off on Brown Friday.”

Abrams admitted people may feel they have to pay more for a call on a holiday, so they wait until the next day, which adds to the “Brown Friday” calls.

“They suffer through the holiday when they don’t need to,” Abrams said, adding that most Roto Rooter facilities do not charge extra for a holiday call. “So on (Brown) Friday we get slammed.”

Extra showers, extra laundry loads and extra dishes put an excessive strain on the plumbing and drain system in a house.

“Everybody is home for the holidays and people are panicked,” Pacilla said. “There’s just an increased level of everything that’s going in the drain. Everybody’s trying to clean up and get everything done. On the residential side, the calls increase.”

In all of their years in the business, the plumbers say they have seen a little bit of everything.

“There are many (instances) where, thankfully, we were able to get something resolved and there’s a happy ending,” Elnar said.

One issue Elnar said takes place frequently around the holidays is with bathrooms that aren’t typically used.

“We’ve had situations where guest bathrooms are over a living space and the bathroom hadn’t been used in a while,” Elnar said. “Now you start having some more people flushing the toilet, you have a backup and it overflows through the ceiling.”

Refrain from putting certain foods down the garbage disposal to avoid backed-up sinks.

“No protein, no grains, no chicken, no fish, no corn, no pasta,” Bossong said.

“The worst offender of all in the kitchen sink are those turkey drippings,” Abrams added. “It goes down like liquid, but it solidifies like candle wax on the inside of the pipes, and it narrows the diameter of that drainpipe, and it chokes it off.”

Other suggestions include making sure only human waste and toilet paper are flushed down the toilet; dump grease and fat in the trash, not the sink, and space out showers and laundry loads.

Another suggestion from Abrams: Put a toilet plunger in any bathroom guests may be using.

“Your guests can avoid that walk of shame and embarrassment,” Abrams said. “A lot of times, people slip out as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me.’ It’s better to be able to deal with the problem rather than just pretend that it didn’t happen and cause a bigger problem.”