I use a whipped shea butter blend in the summer. In winter months I use the same whipped shea butter, but use lotion first then the whipped butter to seal it in. The key to not feeling slippery or sticky is not being heavy handed during application. I want to prevent ashiness, but also have soft moisturized skin. I think everyone should use lotion. You may not always be able to see the ashiness, but you can definitely feel it. I recommend using some sort of lotion if you going to be touching someone, being touched, or holding hands. Nothing like touching someone and their skin feels and looks like dehydrated leather or reptile skin.
Pretty sure most articles warning about oils clogging pipes are written by plumbing companies promoting their services and therefore not exactly objective. Kitchen sinks get more oil than any bathtub and I don’t think I’ve ever had a clogged one.
A thread that seemed like just an indirect form of advertising has turned into interesting, substantial conversation. I appreciate this.
@SammyG_
As a former employee of a plumbing company, I can confirm that fat, oil, and grease (or FOG) typically only clog the pipes of your home if A. the pipes are old, and/or B. you haven't taken the proper precautions to move the fat, oil, and grease along.
The pipes your house connects to are different, however. If your pipes are brand-spanking-new and you always run hot water down after the FOG, all that slime will solidify in the community system instead.
The sewer system is usually what suffers.
@DaringSprinter How about salt? I thought jojoba oil might clog my shower but it's all in salt. I wonder if the salt is somehow helping? The salt remains granulated from start to finish so I also thought it would collect somewhere. But after months of showering with nothing but jojoba and salt scrub every day, it's still running clean. 🤞
@PeopleLikeUs: I've never heard of any kind of salt causing a drain problem, unless you've got really old or unplasticized pipes—metal and salt don't tend to get along too well. But otherwise you should be good. In fact, salt and hot water can clear some clogs.
So yeah, that might be it! Salt counters jojoba oil... at least long enough to get it out of your home, and maybe after: I've never done an analysis on a fatberg.
If you use or make your own natural soaps, one of the main ingredients will be some type of oil.
@Moxytocin Extra Virgin Olive 🫒 Oil -cold pressed- is the best ☺️
@DaringSprinter What kinds of remedial actions are taken when a fatberg forms in a sewer system? Are there fatbreaker tunnel vehicles? Or is it more like an angioplasty?
@UCpaaHVg6u0: The company I worked for only handled residential and business plumbing—we were never hired by the city—but from what I understand, while there are specialized trucks that can help, workers have to go down into the sewers with hoses and vacuums and scrapers and stuff.
This one was in Detroit back in 2018. See how it's filled up half the pipe? It was about 6 feet tall, 100 feet long. (Image from MLive News.)
@DaringSprinter OMG! 😂 That looks like an old B movie waiting to happen! I heard that there is an informal cottage industry in People's China, supposedly prohibited, whereby they harvest sewer fat to refine into cooking oil to sell to the poor. I could see possibly harvesting it for fuel, the way they run diesels on transesterified McDonald's grease. Like, put a pig in your tank (for the Boomer's reading this).
@DaringSprinter that is not a solid mass of crud though. It is a crust of fat, grease, sludge and anything light enough to be coated in it for added buoyancy.
In most large sewage treatment plants the tanks and large bore pipes are aerated to keep the bacteria happy and alive digesting the stuff below the crust.
The gooey crust is anywhere from six to ten inches thick depending on the diameter of the tank and how often it is vacced off.
Below the crust of goo aka float, is various solids, more waste water and everything that sinks aka grit.
That gets cleaned usually only when the tank is drained empty or they have clogging problems. That is also where you find the valuables, rings, coins, ect.
Reason I know this is because I ran a vac tanker for four years hauling hazardous and non hazardous waste streams.
@KYtransplant: I don't know about other fatbergs, but a lot of that particular fatberg (the one in the B-movie-esque picture) was a solid mass of crud. Source: the Macomb County Public Works release.
The Macomb County Fatberg was about 100 feet long, 10 feet wide and as much as 6 feet tall when it was discovered and broken up. It weighed about 19 tons. Much of the fatberg had to be cut apart as it had become completely solid. Other parts were broken off using highpressure water jets. It was a dirty and dangerous job.
Those things can get pretty bad. (Click the quoted paragraph if you want to see more disgusting pictures!)
Vaseline with shea butter
@DaringSprinter yikes! They should have separated and skimmed that with vac lines before it ever got that bad!
Love interesting stuff like this. I actually put a bidet attachment on my toilet and only use septic safe Scott's tissue because I have seen the mess and clogs.
Nope. Indoor plumbing cost me a 15k septic system for the house.
I WILL ABSOLUTELY police what goes down my drains.
@KYtransplant: They really should have. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure, and all that.
I keep an eye on what goes down my drains, too.