Toilet Question.

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Situation:

Had a toilet that would not flush. Water would slowly drain, but no flushing. Plunged the hell out of the toilet with no success. Replaced entire flush system. Still no luck. Bought a toilet snake a rammed that bitch back and forth for 20 minutes. Still no flush. Finally bought a new bowl (and matching tank). Pulled off the old bowl, poured bucket of water down drain, everything seemes perfect. Even ran a snake down drain to see if it may have been clogged. I didn't even pull up one chunk of ANYTHING. Put new bowl and tank in and everything is perfect.

My question is.. What and how could go wrong inside the bowl itself? I couldn't visually see anything inside the bowl, but that damn thing wouldn't flush.

[Speedy Jim]

Take the bowl out in the yard and break it open with a hammer. You would be amazed at the odd stuff that gets lodged in there!

Jim

[Michael Baugh]

I dealt with a poor flush situation the other day. The rubber part of the wax ring was the culprit.

[Tom Baker]

Passages and openings into bowl can become plugged. There have been seveal threads on the topic. Cleaning the openings has worked for me.

Tom Baker

[Jim Elbrecht]

-snip-

I found a tennis ball in one once. Once I found it, it made perfect sense. The bowl would drain slowly as long as the snake was in it-- remove snake, solid clog. Never any debris on the snake.

Damned kids.

Jim

[Michael Baugh]

I recall well the jar lid the kids were using for a boat. When it sank, they decided the water was "icky" and flushed it. The lid caught midway along, sometimes letting stuff go by, including a toilet snake, other times stopping everything. I retrieved it with judicious use of a plunger, quickly PULLING the contents of the trap.

[EvoDawg]

Have any kids? Could be a toy stuck in the trap. Happened to me more than a few times. Rich

[jim]

if you have kids, its one of their toys down there...if not then you might have one of those three shelved things behind the toilet.. like we have with just about every tube or bottle or jar of every type of body wash, lotion, and other stuff that the females use... we had quite a few fall down and had to be retrieved by pulling up the toilet and bringing it out in the back yard and then going into it with a hose from each side, the top and bottom and then a small narrow snake to shove some of the stuff out..... that is probably your problem????

[Gary Dyrkacz]

Gary Dyrkacz [e-mail] Radio Control Aircraft/Paintball Physics/Paintball for 40+

[Joe K]

Cracked trapway (internal) ... Can't see it, but it plays hell with the siphon action.

Ask any plumber -

With respect, I am

Joe

[Stormin Mormon]

When I was a kid, my sister used to use a small aluminum dish from her doll's teaset for holding food for the gerbils. I remember it being about the size of a jelly jar lid. Or some other small jar lid -- maybe about the size of an old babyfood jar lid.

The gerbils filled the small dish with woodchips and such, she tried to rinse it off in the toilet, and dropped it in. Got lodged.

We found out that we could flush on liquids but not solids. Dad finally had to pull the toilet up, and got the dish out some how.

[Stormin Mormon]

Had a friend who had the toilet off. He put a foam coffeecup in the drain to keep the sewer gasses back. Put the toilet back on without remembering to take the foam cup out. Pulled the flush handle and had a flood on the floor.