DIY Toilet Clearing
One of the most horrifying household sights is a toilet that keeps filling after it has been flushed. Follow these tips to help clear a toilet clog.
Behold: A clogged toilet.
Toilets have built-in traps (a section of plumbing that uses a pocket of air to seal off drainage smells). Objects can get stuck in the trap and cause slow draining or a toilet clog. Thankfully, clogs/blockages can usually be cleared with a plunger. For the sake of your plumbers and your toilet, please do not use chemical drain cleaners in a toilet– or any drain for that matter! Chemical drain cleaners stay in toilet drain and drain pipes and will cause much worse damage in the future when they eat your pipes. You can pick up tools, like a plunger, relatively cheaply from a local hardware or DIY store if you don’t have one already. By using a promo code, (see here for more details), you’ll be able to get your tools at an even more affordable price.
First thing’s first. If there is no water in the bowl, pour some water in it. The water will help seal the plunger flange and create a vacuum. This allows you to apply pressure to dislodge the blockage. For a little extra help along the way, add 3 tablespoons of dish soap to the bowl and wait a few minutes before you start plunging. The soap will lubricate the interior of the drain and help loosen the clog when you plunge.
Next… Plunge madly about a dozen times! Remove the plunger from the toilet bowl to allow it to drain. If it doesn’t drain or begins to drains slowly, repeat plunging. If it drains quickly, success! Now, while this may be one such job that you might have success in fixing yourself, there are other more difficult ones that might require external help. You could enlist the services of someone like Apollo Plumbing – Www.apolloplumbing.net/services/water-heaters/ – to assist you in solving your problem.
If repeated plunging hasn’t helped the blockage move, it’s time for an auger. Maybe you’ve got a two year old who wanted to see if their little Nemo toy could actually swim and now he’s lodged in there. One time a customer’s puppy flushed a toy ball down the toilet!
A word to the wise: Use a specially designed toilet auger to avoid cracking your toilet. Turn the crank on the toilet auger clockwise and push. The auger can push the blockage forward into the drain system. If it catches on the object, continue turning the crank as you pull out the cable until you can retrieve the object. Did you find Nemo?! No? Well read on.
If plunging and augering didn’t work, the only option left is to remove the toilet. You have two choices here. 1: Remove it yourself, or 2: Call for one of the qualified BBB Accredited Red Seal Plumbing Technicians at Water Heater Rescue! Alternatively, if you are out of our catchment area, you could take a look at other professionals in your area (visit web site here for one example) to seek assisstance.
