We have a Very Olde House with Very Olde Plumbing, so I often have to pour water into the toilet (near-boiling temp works best for me). And plunge like a maniac if that doesn’t do it.Usually the agitation and the hot water (check out a KSP graph sometime-- solubility of turdage goes up with temp) does the trick.
No damage! I’m putting water in a big ceramic bowl that was made to hold water. That holds gallons of water all day, every day.
There was a big change in the design of American toilets a couple decades ago:
"A low-flow toilet is a flush toilet that uses significantly less water than a full-flush toilet. Low-flow toilets use 6 liters (1.6 gallons) or less per flush as opposed to 13.2 liters (about 3.5 gallons) as was the norm years ago. They came into use in the United States in the 1990s, citing water conservation concerns…
In 1992 President George H. W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act. This law made 1.6 gallons per flush toilets standard. This law went into effect in Jan 1, 1994 for residential buildings and Jan 1, 1997 for commercial building where it cannot consume more than 1.6 gallons per flush."
Basically before the law came into effect toilets worked fine, but used a lot of water. Now they use a lot less water but clog up easily.
Not true in my experience. As I mentioned above, I used to have 6 gpf toilets. They clogged all the time. My low flow toilets have clogged only once or twice since installation.
It’s not so much the quantity of water, but the basic design. In Australia when you have a crap you don’t look down at a turd floating around in a bowl of water, only inches away from your ass. That is the revolting difference between the toilets.
In my experience the best toilets that block the least are in Planes and cruise ships. The latter have the vacuum type that sound like a jet taking off. If they block the guy comes around and turns on the heavy duty vacuum and that fixes it. :o
Yes, even the old toilets clog easily in my experience (but then again, it’s I shit square). Even with the old toilets which used a lot of water the water did not gain much momentum, it just slowly filled the bowl and slowly drained away. Any waste of some size could easily get lodged in the bend and get stuck. I found that if you pour a bucket of water from some height as you flush the toilet the water styream will gain quite enough speed to push waste through because it acts like a hammer with a lot of momentum. It’s a small pain compared to clogging the toilet.
Interesting. For me, it’s been since the 6gpf toilets went away. The new ones are terrible and now I have to use either a bucket or plunger to get them to flush half the time. One of my friends has one of those vacuum assist toilets, or whatever they’re called. Those things are amazing and could probably suck a small child down–they kind of make that roaring sound like in an airplane lav.
Umm, check out the 3rd meaning given here. It’s a perfectly cromulent use of the word.
Do NOT use a regular snake. It will scratch your toilet. There are shielded snakes for unclogging toilets but many of those will still scratch. Plus they are even harder to clean out afterwards than plungers.
If the clog is below the floor level, one possible disadvantage of just adding water is that if the toilet seal is leaky, it increases the amount of water oozing out and into the subfloor. The long term solution is to replace the seal, of course. But using a plunger for a few seconds decreases the amount of sewerage that might get past the seal.
in the first post. Concern about the plunger getting ‘dirty’, my counterpoint is raise the ‘dirty’ water level high enough and unlike the plunger, now you have a uncleanable area where the icky water has touched.
And yes perhaps using sewage would be better then sewerage, but sewerage passed the spell check, and I moved on.
I think if there is any concern over the amount of waste - particularly, the quantity of toilet paper required - then perform an early flush before you fill the bowl. You’re not required to wait until you are completely finished to flush, and only flush once.
(Flushing every time you shift to wipe, on the other hand, is overkill, and why I dread/hate autoflushers.)