When I first saw the thread title, I immediately thought it was some kind of Japanese cartoon.
Damn fine thread title.
Oh man…I seriously am confused right now, having read this thread. Do I go and vomit (not in the toilet, because I’m afraid now of what could happen…), or do I sit here and laugh at all your misfortunes?
Oh, and I’d so want a T-shirt like that. I’m picturing a black T, with just the white words “Horrible Toilet Volcano” on the front. Perfect for any occasion!
Okay, that does it. I am definitely looking into getting some T-shirts printed up! I’ll e-mail you guys who are interested when I find out if I can get like maybe five done, if that’s possible.
I’d buy one. 
How amusing to find everyone in love with this thread title. Yesterday I saw the thread, chuckled over it, but didn’t click. What happened all last evening? The phrase Horrible Toilet Volcano kept popping into my head.
And now I can’t stop thinking about Horseflesh’s sharp sister-in-law who “neatly hops over the poo lava stream and bravely attacks the source”
This was not a thread to read while eating lunch.
I’m having toilet probelms too. I just hired a handyman to come and look at it on Thursday. I got water leaking all over the place. I guess I am lucky I haven’t had an explosions.
Well, I’ve resisted any number of other topics that friends have shown me from these boards, but I feel that here, in this thread, my possible contribution is simply too great.
Imagine a small 1930’s era cottage tucked away in the wilds of Hollywood, a bathroom with interesting plumbing and a toilet. I have just spent the night along with a group of friends. We’re keeping five people in a house better suited to one. It’s later in the evening. The sound of people and distant traffic drifts gently through the open windows. It’s late in the year, but it’s Los Angeles, so the weather is beautiful.
A topic of great enthusiasm over much of the weekend has been the personal hygiene failings of former friends and acquaintances. Delight has been taken in the social faux pas made. A large meal has been consumed. The toilet requires either twenty minutes to fill or it must be filled with water from the bathtub.
I decide that while I’m feeling reasonably energetic, fresh and not in need of toilet – and everyone else is likewise inclined – I shall fix this recalcitrant thing and return to the living room and a hero’s welcome.
I close the door and begin work on the porcelain beast, attacking all those points of weakness I’m aware of in the design. Nothing I do helps alleviate the bottleneck, and I cannot get enough parts off to clean out the buildup that is restricting water flow. This is somewhat strenuous and warm work.
After ten minutes or so peristalsis delivers dinner in a manner most exigent. Luckily, I am in the very room of such demands and so I make easy work of my gastrointestinal task. This, however, presents me with a difficulty. The toilet is still functioning in a significantly less than ideal manner. The sorcerer’s stone of digestion has transmuted the stuff of dinner into a matter most buoyant, yet the toilet never forms a proper suction. After three flushes and some plunging, I have succeeded only in mixing up the contents of the bowl and making myself rather over-warm.
There is an added aspect of difficulty. The only water that comes out of the tub, and hence refills the tank of the toilet, is the hot water. Under normal circumstances, this does not cause any problems. The first bucket of water is warm but not scalding. However, by the time 5 or more buckets have gone through this monstrous beast, the water in those buckets is hot enough to cook lobsters.
All the while I am thinking back to the discussions of the noxious odors and boorish behavior of guests. Stories traded over the weekend with zeal and commiseration. I am thinking that I am very near to becoming so exhausted that I leave my friend’s tiny bathroom with a toilet full of what will no doubt become legendary. This is not merely a floater.
This is a toilet full of nearly boiling feces that has been rendered a uniform consistency by heat and plunging.
At this point, my wife knocks on the door to ask if I am alright and could I please hurry it up as other people would kind of like to use the cursed closet I have cloistered myself into.
Finally I have an epiphany. I put a thin layer of toilet paper on top of the whole mess, let it soak up and sink then give the toilet another flush. Sure enough, most of it goes down the drain. I pour another bucket of boiling water into the tank, add a bit more toilet paper and give it another flush. Cleanliness is achieved.
I emerge from the toilet – my clothes plastered to me like some kind of sweaty papier-mache – and admit that I have just stewed my own poo instead of fixing the toilet.
At least it has become a legend that only I actually saw.
Your post, sir, is a thing of beauty. While I mourn the posts you might have written before, I thank you for your story and look forward to your future contributions.
Why thank you!
The next time anyone mentions ‘British Teeth’ I’m going to come back with ‘American Plumbing’…
Yeah, but don’t you Brits leave a lot of your pipes above ground so that “it’s easier to fix when they freeze” instead of burying them below the frost line so you don’t have to worry about them freezing like we Yanks do?
Freeze?
I’m in England, not Canada.
Funny, I’ve seen pictures of England with snow on the ground. I guess all these years when I thought that England wasn’t a tropical paradise, I was wrong.
Look, we had temperatures of over 100 degrees fahrenheit over here a couple of weeks ago…
Mains water pipes freeze, but I’ve never heard of sewage ones freezing (maybe it’s all the curry we eat over here), and our toilets don’t tend to send sewage cascading down our stairs…
Don’t mention my teeth, I won’t mention your plumbing.
Deal? 
Wow, 100 Degrees? Amazing. I didnt know temperatures got that low.
Of course, I live in the Hottest place on earth. Well it ties with a little place in Afghanistan. 116F, But I have seen 125, and 80 Christmas day.
As for my toilet, it is the most vile contraption. No matter how small the turd, it wont go down on the first flush.
We keep a drawer full of bamboo skewers nearby in case something needs to be poked into submission.
I want an industrial toilet that blasts all the crap down the pipes with firehose pressure.
Or one that uses those 1920’s style death rays.
Here in England, we don’t talk about toilets.
We talk about the weather.
And 100 degrees f was a big deal to us.
we’ll be talking about it for years.
Maybe our dentists aren’t too good, but at least our plumbers know what they’re doing.
I solved our slow flush problem after I got tired of our Four Flusher
I went to Home Depot and bought a pressure flush toilet. It’s got a pressure tank built in that gets pumped up with air from the pressure of the water line as it refills.
We call it the ballooshnakov (for the very satisifying sound that it makes )
Eek. Toilets scare me for this very reason…you just described my worst nitemare.
But yeah. I shouldn’t have read this while eating. Not good at all.