Hosts thankful for plumbers on holidays

If Thanksgiving had a superhero, a plumber might be it.

Couple rich, greasy food with a house full of relatives, and even the hardiest drain or septic system might call it quits.

"Every year -- Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve -- it's the same thing," said Jessica Poulin, office manager for Esposito Plumbing and Heating in Farmingdale.

Poulin said that though call volume didn't usually seem to rise over Thanksgiving, a caller's volume definitely did. "They're always in a panic when they call on a holiday," she said.

Ray Gremaux, owner of Ray the Plumber, which has three Suffolk County locations, said his company usually had only a quarter of its normal business on Thanksgiving.

"I would say over 50 percent of calls are for drain stoppages. Kitchen sinks, that's a big thing," he said. "Everybody's cooking. And it's always an emergency."

Though blocked drains and cesspool issues are among the most common on Thanksgiving, Gremaux said, water heaters also seem to pick turkey day to call it quits.

"Every holiday, we get water heaters. I don't care -- Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. Any holiday," Gremaux said.

Chris O'Connor runs Plumb Rite, a drain cleaning business in Hauppauge. O'Connor said every year he spends Thanksgiving rushing home between jobs to see his family and eat his dinner.

"If you got nothing going on, you run home, jam a couple slices of turkey down your throat, hopefully you can sit for a while."

Though he may miss his family's meal, he often is a crowd-pleaser at someone else's Thanksgiving.

"Usually when you get over there you're more popular than Santa Claus," O'Connor said.