What NOT To Flush Down Our Chicago Toilets?
Mommies Often Ask Us… Can I Flush This Down My Toilet?
The other day a valued customer asked me
“Can I flush feminine products and all the handiwipes my kids go through down my toilet?”
When it comes to protecting your home’s plumbing system, this is a great question. After all, everything our plumbing systems do for us, day in and day out, happens out of sight. Most people never see what the inside of their home’s pipes look like.
And with freezing weather always around the corner here in Chicago, Pipes our ‘top-of-mind’ here at Rocket Plumbing HQ, we have already been advising our customers on preventing frozen and burst pipes.
So for your benefit, I’ll also share my answer, earned from many years of clearing pipes, here:
1) Baby Wipes: They do not flush or drain the way standard toilet paper does. Baby wipes are heavy and tend to ‘glob’ together inside your drain creating whats call ‘soft blockage’ which can only be flushed out of your drain performing ‘Hydro Jetting‘. Whats even more deceiving is that they build up over a period of time until your drain eventually backs up creating an emergency that can end up being and absolute mess!
Avoid putting baby wipes down your drain at all costs!
2) QTips and Cotton Pads: These also do not break down, and if you’ve ever seen cotton pull apart when snagged on a rough service, you can imagine how easy it would be to create a blockage in your pipe system, snagging other debris trying to flow past it.
3) Diapers: As much as it would seem a logical fit to go into your toilet, these also do not biodegrade at all, and are even worse than the previous two on this list.
4) Dental Floss: Also bad. They can turn into a net, trapping anything else coming after it. Toss em with the diapers.
5) Paper Towels: Any mother will tell you paper towels are a godsend around our little ones. But they are of a tougher blend of fibers, and we see them creating blockages all the time. Best to avoid dumping down your toilet.
6) Menstrual Products: Definitely not, and here’s why… they are designed to absorb fluid, not biodegrade in it. You do NOT want to flush a material that expands into your pipes. Toss these in the same place you would diapers.
The Surprising Thing You Should NOT Flush:
Bleach.
If you are a frequent cleaner of your bathroom area with bleach, keep this in mind… bleach is actually too harsh a chemical for your toilet and septic system. I recommend get the stains in your toilet out by using vinegar instead.
Rocket Plumbing has had a major focus on Drain Cleaning this past year, as we have adopted some cutting edge tools that not only clear pipes wall to wall, they even clean the pipe’s surface to prevent snagging material. So if you have tossed these items in your toilet in the past, we can clean those pipes better than any other plumbing company.
If you are looking for home decor upgrades and been eyeing a toilet upgrade, we can not only install that toilet upgrade for you, but check your system with our sewer camera while we are at it, and see how your plumbing system is handling your day to day useage.
Don’t hesitate to give us a call at 773-219-1200 if you have a question about any of the above.
