Partially blocked toilet?

[Mike Barnes]

The downstairs toilet used to flush OK but now the bowl fills with water and then takes about five seconds to drain away, the water level dropping about 3 cm below normal and slowly rising again to about 1 cm below normal.

It seems to me that there must be a partial blockage somewhere, and I'd prefer to sort it out before it becomes a total blockage. Any suggestions?

From the back of the pan the pipe turns right, goes through a side wall, then turns right again and goes into the side of a vertical soil stack (total distance so far about 1 metre). The soil stack is only about a metre long, being capped just above the junction. This unusual (and possibly illegal) arrangement hasn't given any trouble before in the 15 years we've lived here.

[Roger Mills]

You need to isolate the blockage. Do you have other toilets? What happens when you flush them? How are they connected into the sewer?

If other toilets exhibit the same problem, the blockage is downstream somewhere, and you need to look in any outside manholes you may have. If they don't, you need to concentrate on the pipework which serves only this single downstairs toilet.

Does the 'cap' on the short stack unscrew? If so, it's probably a rodding point for just such occasions as this. Nothing unusual - or illegal - about that as far as I'm aware.

[Toby]

You need to lift the nearest inspection cover in the garden to see if you can see "water" backing up there.

I suggest you only open this after leaving it to drain for a good few hours, as otherwise you may end up with "water" exiting the inspection cover!

(Replace "water" with anything you have flushed down the toilet!!!)

Toby...

[Frank Erskine]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:36:43 +0100, Mike Barnes had this to say:

Angle grinder of course.

And more roughage in your food.

[Stuart Noble]

We're on the end of a shared drain so we get the symptoms first, and often the neighbours' toilets are still flushing normally. The water company do ours for free as we're pre 1935, or whatever the year is, but most of the street doesn't seem to be aware of this. I still see DynoRod vans from time to time.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Caustic soda and a kettle of hot.

[The Medway Handyman]

Assuming its in the 1 metre run to the soil pipe;

Top of the 'blame' list are females flushing sanitary products, toddlers flushing anything & those pesky plastic bowl fresheners.

A drain snake might shift it

if not often easier to remove the toilet so you can get to the pipe. Wet vac is a help.

Hard water area? Could well be a build up of limescale, thats what happened to ours - same symptoms.