A few months ago I happened on a trick for clearing a stopped-up toilet. I fill up a pasta pot from the bathtub tap, and carefully pour it into the bowl either until the water level reaches the rim or until the blockage clears up. If it doesn’t work the first time, I wait until the water level goes down a few inches and then pour in more water. IME this has always worked on the first or second attempt.
This method seems to have a huge advantage over using a plunger. When you use a plunger you have to stick this household object into a stew of raw sewage, and when you’re done you have to lift it out while it’s dripping with contaminated water. With my trick there’s none of that since I never touch water or use a plunger at all. It’s clearly far more sanitary than the traditional approach. Incidentally, it’s difficult if not impossible to do this by adding water from the tank, because it’s too difficult to control the water level and make sure it doesn’t overflow.
Is there a downside to this? Is there any reason everybody doesn’t do it this way and plungers haven’t followed buggy whips and Lockheed Constellations into oblivion? Will it continue to work time after time–until the “bad one”, after which my toilet will burst asunder or part from its moorings? I’ve heard of some quite unexpected ways in which people (or their kids, usually) broke toilets. I can’t find it now but there was a thread on here about how the OP’s young son broke a toilet by sitting on the closed lid facing the wall and playing Lone Ranger or something like that. Somehow this broke a pipe–either the waste pipe or the water supply, I don’t remember which. Perhaps it was both.
There is no downside to pouring extra water into a toilet. The toilet has a cleverly designed drain that is supposed to allow water to fill to a certain level but no more. You are just adding more with the hope that more water volume and the slightly increased pressure from it will clear the blockage.
I have done it too and it works quite well sometimes. However, it won’t always work especially for large or stubborn clogs. That is when you need a plunger or maybe even another tool if it is really bad.
after using the plunger give it a use on a clean free bowl to rinse it inside and out.
a used plunger can also have shit on or in it, needs to be wiped if not rinsed clean.
i’ve used the method you describe with good success. downsides are ‘out of use’ for whatever time, if it doesn’t work you may have to remove some water before plunging (though you can do a forceful gentle plunge without making waves).
An easier way to accomplish the same thing is just to flush the toilet a second time, as long as the bowl is big enough to accommodate the volume of water without overflowing. This works with my low-flow (1.6 gpf) toilet. My previous toilets (6 gpf!) would have overflowed.
Applying extra water to the bowl is increasing the pressure on the upstream side of the clog in hopes that provides enough pressure to push the clog through. This may be effective for some clogs, but is not a given it will be sufficient strength to clear all clogs. Some seeping may occur, allowing the water level to drop, but it is slow.
Alternately, chemical clog breakers try to affect the clog such that it weaks, which can then be aided by adding water to increase pressure.
The plunger works by applying a strong force backwards to unseat the clog. Thrusting in can also provide increase force against the plug to push it through. This back and forth motion typically breaks up the clog more effectively than relying on the increase of water pressure alone.
Another tool is the drain snake. It, too, suffers the problem of being contaminated by being covered in shit and/or piss.
There should not be any risk to the toilet to applying as much water as the bowl can hold. The worst that will happen is that the clog will not unseat and will not drain and the bowl will be full, making a bigger mess when you resort to the plunger.
There is a ‘downside’ depending on how high you let the water rise. If you add enough water for the ‘raw sewerage’ level to flood the cavity where water pours out from the bowl. That is uncleanable, unlike a plunger. In the past i also had a infestation of insects take up residence in that channel, perhaps because I allowed the water to rise that much.
using chemicals is a bad thing because they are hazardous to have splashed out of the bowl or removed when it doesn’t work. i think they aim at grease/fats and not fresh shit anywho.
rapid introduction of water helps create a good flush. siphon jet models are a plus. if the holes in the rim clog with minerals from hard water this can lead to deteriorating flushing satisfaction.
I have no idea what “sewerage” may be. Is it anything like “sewage”?
At any rate adding hot water and letting it slowly seep through will often soften the clog where cold water might not.
In my experience American toilets tend to clog more often due to narrower sewage pipes (I think I remember as little as 4"). Being a somewhat big guy I have clogged many a toilet and have learnt that quickly pouring a bucket of water at the same time as you flush tends to create enough momentum that will flush along waste that might clog if only the toilet tank is used. And, as I say, once clogged a few buckets of hot water often do the trick.
Toilets in Spain rarely clog as easily as they do in America but the drains are not vented correctly and you often get sewer gas past the traps and it stinks in the bathroom and often the whole apartment. This is extremely unpleasant and extremely easy to fix but plumbers everywhere just do what they’ve always done. Once the building is completed and the bathroom stinks it is too late as any changes become too expensive.
One advantage of putting in extra water, perhaps repeatedly, after waiting for the level to go down (it usually does, gradually, IME) is that even if it ultimately fails to clear the clog, it washes down most of the shit and piss, leaving just paper, so that the plunger does not get too dirty if you eventually do have to use it.
I usually just flush, wait for the level to gradually go down, and flush again. Almost always, after a few such flushes, it clears. The relative violence and large volume of a proper flush seems much more likely to clear things than just pouring a bit of extra water in from a container, but whatever works for you.
Our blockages are mostly too major for water to do much good. I go with a plunger, then a drain snake, then taking the bowl off to see what is blocking it, then an electric snake applied to an outside trap, then calling someone with a longer, more powerful electric snake, and then a new sewer.
Yes, I’ve been through this entire path, though only once to the end.
Now if our kitchen sink is slow to drain pouring hot water down it usually works - but it has a metal, not ceramic, basin.
You learn to not be very copraphobic after a while.
It seems that we do some things better over in the UK. In my 70 years, I have only had maybe two or thee experiences with a blocked lavatory. Floaters, yes. Bunged solid, no.
Australia has the same type of toilets as the UK, they will block, but not as easily. The US must have the worst toilet system in the world (include Canada and the Philippines in that ) as I regularly block them when I’m visiting there. It’s so disgusting to watch the turd circle around the bowl before vanishing, hopefully, down the hole.
When I’ve needed to use a plunger, I just hold it against the side of the bowl for a couple of flushes. Then I add bleach to the bowl and swish the plunger clean. If it doesn’t come clean with swishing, use the toilet brush. I haven’t needed it since the weirdos downstairs moved out. I wonder what the heck they were plugging the line with. Never mind, I really probably don’t want to know that.