Poop doesn’t always wash down with the water after we flush; sometimes it remains in your toilet bowl and may block sewer pipes.
To unclog a toilet, start by pouring some dish soap liquid down its drain. Since its density is greater than water’s, the soap will settle to cover any debris clogging up your pipework and unblock its route.
Faulty Toilet Design
Toilets are designed to flush away waste, but sometimes things do not dissolve as planned – either because of clogging or because something didn’t make its way down the drain. If this occurs, this could indicate either that something wasn’t flushed away completely, or simply wasn’t washed down as intended.
Most toilets feature a trap that prevents materials from reaching sewer lines and causing major clogs, similar to what sinks employ for P-traps. Excessive toilet paper usage or flushing foreign materials into it are among the leading causes of blocked traps in toilets.
Your toilet’s fill valve could also be off balance, leading to ineffective filling of its tank with waste and forcing waste into the drainpipes. Each fill valve features a float which rises as more water enters its tank – if its position becomes too low or stuck it could shut off early and thus interrupting waste removal from your system.
Checking the float requires taking two steps. First, remove the overflow tube from its hole. If the float doesn’t sit correctly, shortening its refill tube (a plastic hose connecting directly to the overflow tube). Or alternatively use a larger-sized toilet tank with higher fill levels to adjust accordingly.
Clogged Sewer Line
Your home features multiple drain lines to collect waste from sinks, toilets and tubs before connecting to your main sewer line, which sends waste directly into a sewage system or septic tank. When this drain becomes blocked with debris or becomes inaccessible due to blockages in its route outside your house, wastewater builds up in drains and toilets until eventually flooding back in through these same lines – leading to flooding of both.
One of the primary factors in creating a clogged sewer line is flushing non-biodegradable items down toilets, including baby wipes, toys and sanitary napkins. To maintain an effective sewer system it’s important to only flush human waste, toilet paper and grease down your toilets.
Signs of a clogged sewer line include gurgling noises in the bathroom and an unpleasant odor coming from sink, toilet or other drains. Toilets typically act as gateways into the sewer line first. Furthermore, you might also experience floor drains backing up while using either your bathtub or shower.
Clogged sewer lines can be an immense hassle that necessitates professional assistance from plumbers. DIY solutions won’t work here as the drain lines are typically buried deep underground and often require heavy machinery for access. A plumber can use camera inspection tools and various drain cleaning methods to locate and clear away clogs before providing solutions that restore normal drainage when your toilet flushes.
Faulty Plunger
If a plunger has failed to clear your drains, the issue could lie further along in its route. If your clog is more severe than can be handled with just plunger, an auger might be necessary to break up poop and other debris that has built up inside of your pipes.
Clogs could also occur in your toilet’s rim jets, small holes that allow water to flow and start the flush cycle. When they become blocked up, flushing becomes difficult. Scrubbing the holes with a scrub brush or toothbrush might help open them up; use hot water then to flush away debris.
Check your fill valve regularly to detect issues with it, since if it becomes stuck or adjusted incorrectly it won’t shut off when water levels rise resulting in overfilling and poor flushing performance.
Your clog could also be caused by subpar toilet paper that does not dissolve easily in water, leading to build-up in both trapway and bowl, leading to an unsightly mess of poop-stained surfaces. Switch to higher quality brand toilet paper to avoid this in the future. Furthermore, consider investing in an effective plunger which can handle more than regular clogs; this will make clearing stubborn ones simpler than more drastic measures such as drain snake.
Faulty Toilet Paper
Poop in toilets may seem to disappear with water alone, but that can be misleading. If feces hits existing blockades such as mineral deposits or toilet paper jams, they can accumulate and cause even bigger blockages to form – often occurring either in the trapway or bowl of the toilet itself – which may be caused by poor design, user behaviour, or simply using specific types of paper products.
If you find yourself flushing multiple times per day, perhaps switching to an eco-friendly, biodegrading toilet paper might be beneficial. Wadding up or folding two-ply paper wastefully is both expensive and wasteful compared to using just a simple single-ply roll instead. Both options will do their jobs just as effectively while saving both resources and money!
Be sure to use only high-quality toilet paper that dissolves in water. If your drain remains blocked, it could be that the lift chain attaching to the handle has too much slack and is not pulling up on the flapper enough for water flow when pulling on the handle – an easily remediable issue which you can fix by altering its length.
