Whether living in a modern home or an older property with antiquated plumbing we may encounter issues with a slow draining toilet. And today with growing populations, affordable means of travel shrinking our world whether we are housesitters or homeowners we need to be mindful of best practice home care and plumbing maintenance techniques to ensure our health. Read this blog to learn some top tips to avoid toilet infection.

Managing home plumbing – Helpful Practices To Avoid Toilet Infection 

In this day and age, we’re hyper aware of most things that could potentially harm us. We’re aware of the plagues of old as well as the new emerging pathogens that pop up on the news every single week.

What rarely makes the news or indeed cross our minds are the potential hazards of everyday living.  The toilet and slow plumbing is one such topic. When it comes to items that we interact with, there’s the potential for whole hosts of bacteria and disease causing organisms to be growing. Hence the importance of home care and plumbing.

Cleaning technicalities

Technically, a surface or an inanimate object that can serve as a transport mechanism for a disease is called a fomite, and as you can guess, the toilet is the biggest one of them all. There’s so much emphasis on cellphones and subway rails. Sure, they can hold things such as fecal matter. Your toilet is the only absolute 100% sure spot to carry said fecal matter. So in the interest of public health, Here are some helpful practices that help you keep away from toilet infections:

Top Tips

Make Sure Your Toilet Is Working Properly

The way a toilet flushes has a lot to do with what festers in between use. When you use the toilet, the whole point of the water stream is to carry down all that needs to be carried down. If not, then you’ve got a wonderful Petri dish of fecal matter and the like just stewing and growing. The biggest culprit is a slow draining toilet. If you take a look at https://amarcoplumbing.com/unblock-slow-draining-toilet/ and their take on toilet function, you’ll come to realize that a lot of us have encountered a not-so-great toilet. So if you think your toilets at home may be a bit lax in the flushing department, take care of that first, and then move on to further disinfection. 

Rubbing Alcohol – Great tip

Brining around some rubbing alcohol or alcohol-gel is always a good home care and plumbing technique. They serve a tremendous purpose in the world of infection control. Throw a bit of it on the toilet bowl seat and let it sit until it dries out. This effectively kills most germs that can cause infection. A word of advice though, the effective strength of rubbing alcohol is between 60%-80%. Over 80% and, ironically, you’re not killing the bacteria do to the mechanism of action alcohol has on germs. 

Don’t Hover – Here’s why

When we’re talking about public toilets, we often think about implementing the well known practice of hovering. While this may seem like the logical move to avoid getting germs on you. However, this might not be the best solution after all. When you hover, you’re tensing a whole bunch of muscles in the lower area of your body. The pivot forwards, the “push the door with your bottom” posture, and, as we all know, the calf and knee strain from having to do this balancing act in heels. It’s just not practical.

As much as we’re “used to it” we cannot discount incomplete urination as a potential for urinary tract infection. We have our own immune system. No matter what we think of the germs, our skin flora are amazing at killing most bad germs. 

In Summary

Avoiding infection is a point of common sense. Ensuring optimal home care and plumbing is important whether it is for your own domain and a day to day existence, or if you are travelling as a housesitter and in an unknown and new environment. Understanding good home plumbing techniques is essential. Technology and some know-how is often more than enough to keep you and your family safe from the strange world of toilet pathogens.