I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their incredible advice. I tried as many of the suggestions as I reasonably could, and didn't tackle the ones that I felt were beyond my ability (I'm recovering from some broken bones and did NOT want to risk climbing on the roof!). When it became obvious that I couldn't fix it, I finally gave up and called Roto-Rooter. :-(
Thanks again, everyone, I really appreciate your time and effort in trying to help.
ScrubsFan wrote:
I'm stumped! I have two IDENTICAL Kohler toilets; they're about 3 years
> old. Let's call them "good toilet" and "bad toilet" since one is
> working and the other is stopped up.
>
> I tried plunging bad toilet, which didn't help. I tried liquid drain
> unclogger (guaranteed to dissolve ANY organic material!--I guess we'll see). >
> So now I want to flush it, but I'm afraid! Why? Because the toilet
> this one replaced overflowed once...and flooded nearly my entire house
> before it could be stopped. So I'm a bit gun shy.
>
> I turned off the water supply to the toilet--or at least I THOUGHT I
> did--as I want to flush it with a controlled (i.e., LIMITED) amount of
> water. Then I started emptying water from the tank, thinking I'd only
> leave about 1/3 or so, again just to make SURE it can't overflow if
> there's really something blocking the drain. But as the water level in
> the tank got down to a certain point, it started filling up again.
> Huh?! How can it do that if I've turned the valve off?
>
> I went to good toilet and tried the exact same motions--turning the
> valve all the way to my right. Then I flushed it, flushed it again, and
> the tank emptied almost all the way. Period. It didn't start refilling
> until I started turning the valve to the left. So WHY is bad toilet
> refilling? There's nothing else I can do--I've turned the valve as far
> to the right as I can.