Pumpkin Guts: A Plumbing Nightmare

Pumpkin carving is a must for the Halloween season! This blog contains tips to make sure this fun filled tradition doesn’t become a plumbing nightmare.

Avoid Dumping Down the Drain

Some may like the ooey gooey feeling of sticky pumpkin guts when they cling to your hands during pumpkin carving. But cleaning that up? Talk about a nightmare. The worst thing you could do is wash those sticky pumpkin innards down your drain or garbage disposal. Despite what you may think, garbage disposals are not meant to dispose of everything. Instead some items can be a real hazard.

Pumpkin innards on their own are super stringy–add water to the mix to make them slimy and they become a whole new problem. When you rinse the innards down your drain a couple things could possibly happen. For instance, the stringy and fibrous pumpkin guts could wrap themselves around the moving parts of your garbage disposal causing a burnout or jam. Additionally, if any portion of the pumpkin guts makes it past the disposal it is sure to cause a clog.

When pumpkin guts begin to dry, they become sticky–just like glue! So, when it dries and sticks to the walls of your pipes it can quickly cause unwanted buildup and eventually a backed-up sink. Talk about an abrupt end to your Halloween party. Lastly, hard foods like pumpkin seeds or stems can’t be completely pulverized by disposals. Since these food items don’t get pulverized, they can still pass through your garbage disposal and get stuck further down your drainpipes.

Have a Clean Up Plan

Before the fun begins and you can embark on your pumpkin carving adventures, you should always have a “pumpkin disposal plan”. To prevent any drain disasters from happening, we recommend carving your pumpkins on a couple layers of newspaper. This makes it easy to wrap up the mess and throw into the garbage or a compost pile. As for the seeds, those can be separated and roasted in the oven for a tasty midnight snack. In contrast, they could be air-dried and saved for later so they can be planted in the spring to grow your next Halloween pumpkin.

Make Super Terry Part of Your Plan

Super Terry is always here to help, so why not make us part of your emergency plan? Terry’s Plumbing will be there to fix that leaky pipe or clogged sink that could ruin your holiday bash. Call us today to get your party back on track.