Bed and Breakfast Owners: Five Tips to Help You Avoid Blocked Drains

As a bed and breakfast owner, you need to know a lot of diverse information. That includes knowing how to avoid clogs in your drain. Want to prevent blocked drains in your establishment? Here are some tips to help:

1. Use a rinse sink and dishwasher filters.

When you are serving multiple guests breakfast, as well as potentially other meals, every day, you have a lot of dishes. With so many dishes, it can be hard to make sure you rinse them all thoroughly. Unfortunately, if you fail to rinse the dishes thoroughly, you may end up clogging your dishwasher and ending up with a clogged drain.

To help reduce the chances of that happening, considering installing a large rinse sink in your kitchen and having ample filters in your dishwasher. Both of those things can help to protect your drains.

2. Run hot water through the sink to help clean out the drains.

Whether you have a rinse sink or a conventional kitchen sink, bits of food can get into it, causing it to potentially become clogged. Oil, butter and other greasy things in particular can clog the sink. To clean out the drains leading out of your sinks, put in the drain stopper and fill the sink with very hot water about once a week. Then, using a fork, remove the stopper and let the super hot water flush out your drains. That can help to prevent problems.

3. Put hair baskets in the shower and bathtub drains.

Multiple people showering and bathing in your inn can also yield clogged drain, and in particular, you need a plan to deal with hair. You can find hair baskets, small mini drains that you place on top of the existing shower or tub drain. When your guests are done showering, they can simply lift out the basket and dispose of their hair, or you can easily do it when you clean the room.

4. Post signs warning what not to flush down the toilet.

Flushing things down the toilet that shouldn't be put in there can be another cause of clogged drains. Post a sign in your guests' bathrooms telling them what can and cannot be flushed down the toilet. This is especially important if you have older pipes that really cannot withstand any odd items flushed into them.

5. Monitor your system for issues.

Also keep an eye out for blocked drains. If water from one part of the house is backing up into a drain or toilet in another part of the house, that is definitely a sign that you potentially have a clogged drain. Contact a plumber as soon as possible. Otherwise, the situation may get out of control, and one guest may flush just to have their waste surface in another guest's shower—not the impression you want to make as a hospitality professional.