Day is draining on plumbers

Christmas elves and retail cashiers weren't the only workers keeping busy the day after Thanksgiving. Plumbers didn't have much time to nurse their turkey hangovers, either.

"We're extremely busy," said Shelley Lewis, owner of Action Plumbing & Rooter, a plumbing company in Stanislaus County. "We were busy on Thanksgiving, too. It is mostly people overstuffing their garbage disposal with potato peels and having a large volume of people using their bathroom."

Clogged drains from grease and guests are a problem as soon as the holiday season starts, but the day after Thanksgiving tops out as one of the plumbing profession's busiest. For plumbers, it's become known as their Black Friday.

"Our incoming calls for service on that day will jump almost 50 percent," said Paul Abrams, spokesman for Roto-Rooter, a national plumbing company. "The day after Thanksgiving is just crazy."

An employee for a Roto-Rooter based in Modesto said that its four plumbers were "keeping pretty busy" Friday. Most of the calls were for clogged sinks or main sewer line problems, she said.

Frank Roby, owner of Frank Roby's Plumbing in Stanislaus County and a plumber for 37 years, said he's seen just about anything and everything that can clog a drain. But of all the culprits, grease is among the worst.

"It is warm going down, but then when the grease cools off it gets real hard," Roby said. "People have a tendency to end up with a drain so packed with grease that you can't get it open with tools. You have to replace the drain. If you can go underneath the sink, that's not real expensive. But if you have to go under concrete slabs to get to it, then you have a real problem."

Corn husks, potato peels, turkey bones and other traditional Thanksgiving foods can jam up a garbage disposal as well.

"People think of garbage disposals like tree chippers, where you can put anything in it and grind it up," Roby said.

He advises people to use common sense when putting things into the garbage disposal. Grease from cooking should be poured in a can or plastic bag, then thrown into the trash, he said.

Jolynn Dawson of Tony's Plumbing Service Inc. in Modesto thinks people may be starting to heed some of those warnings. By noon Friday, the com-pany had received just a handful of service calls for grease-clogged sinks.

Typically, it's a very busy day for the company. "Last year we had about 14 calls, but this year we've had four," Dawson said.

Abrams of Roto-Rooter said that service calls from Thanksgiving through Sunday will number 17,000 to 20,000 nationwide, and the company will earn an extra $500,000 in revenue.

The cost per job varies by region -- "anywhere from $65 to a couple hundred bucks, depending on how severe the clog is," Abrams said.

Normally, kitchen sink calls make up about 10 percent of the calls, but during the holiday they will increase to about 20 percent of calls, Abrams said.

"Almost all of our service technicians have to work on Black Friday," he said. "They know not to ask off of work that day."

McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.

Bee staff writer Christina Salerno can be reached at csalerno@modbee.com or 238-4574.