One member of our household tends to do infrequent but high-volume dumps which often cause the toilet to overflow when it is flushed. The toilet seems very difficult to snake as well.
Is there a modern (and presumably water-saving) toilet that might be particularly suitable for this situation?
The better ones come in two types. There are power flush models that use electric or water pressure to provide extra force to the water during the flush. The others just use good design. Since there seems to be more and better models with good design now, we seem to hear less about the power flush types that can require more maintenance.
Any well designed model will have at least a 2 inch trap. Larger is better. It will also have a fully glazed trap. There are other factors, but there are no recognized standards for those factors as far as I know.
In the US the American Standard Cadets (there are several models) seems to be the model of choice and is generally easy to find and available at a good price. Note: some of their models are fancy and expensive, but the base models are reasonable.
The contractor's special that they put in new homes are not good, but they are cheap. Not all expensive models are any better, but they look fancy.
Don't spring for a new toilet until you make sure there's not something simple wrong with the one that's there now.
I presume you already tried cleaning out the holes around the bottom of the bowl rim with a piece of coat hanger wire in case they were clogged with lime. A pocket mirror will show you those. If you haven't, do so.
There's a fair chance some non-disolvable object was dropped down that toilet some time in the past and is stuck in the "trap" portion of the toilet itself
The surest way to check that is to disconnect the water supply line, unbolt the toilet from the floor, and tip it over so you can see if anything is lodged in the trap that you couldn't see from the bowl side of the drain passage.
With the toilet removed you'll also be able to more easily run a *long* snake down the drain line to try and clean it fully out.
Oh, and get a replacement wax ring first. You'll need it to reseal the toilet to it's flange on replacing it.
Don't leave the drain hole open for hours on end if you can't put the toilet back in place right away. Sewer gas can be dangerous in addition to being smelly. You can stuff a wet towel into the drain opening to temporarily seal it off.
Good luck,
Jeff
Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
"If you can smile when th> One member of our household tends to do infrequent but high-volume dumps
and do a search for "toilets" then click on an article titled "inefficient toilets", scroll down to the report and you will find it. I am sure that other sites also have links to this report, it seems to be relatively wide spread in its distribution.
First make sure your toilet has a working syphon. They flush MUCH better. For really big loads, get an OLD or imported water wasting toilet, at least 4 gal/flush.
TOilets made with SLoan pressure flush valve work well. Available from Kohler and Gerber and others. Kohler and Gerber work well but Kohler is noisy and gerber has very high water level so you might want to get tall version. Neither can overflow because they have a back pressure valve which stops a flush if it cannot finish properly. Great valve technology that is underrated in my opinion.
That can help, but often it's merely a diameter problem. Sometimes it can help to start the flush just before it totally drops. But other solutions are better. A trap that's bigger than 2" (and glazed of course) would help. The more powerful flush solutions would also help.
One trick is to keep a bucket around, and when it looks like flushing might cause the toilet to stop-up, then fill up the bucket, and *at the same instant as you hit the flush-lever*, pour in the water at the *back* of the toilet.
With luck, all the, uh, crap sitting at the bottom, over the exit hole, will be blasted (dispersed) out into the rest of the toilet-bowl (water), and can then , with luck, go down "one at a time".
Give it a try -- sure a lot cheaper than buying a new toilet!
Here are some links to reports about water-saving toilet comparative performance (forgive me, I can't figure out how to insert a functional link, so you'll have to copy and paste the URL to your browser):
Dual Flush Toilets Compared
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Toilet Shopping Pointers
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Short Summary of 6L Toilet Comparison Tests
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34 Page Comparison of 6L Toilets
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Seth's Rant on Crappy Crappers
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Jon Eakes' article asserts that the only water-saving toilet technology that works well in old house plumbing is what's called "Wash Down" technology. Most modern toilets use siphon technology that uses most of the 6L of water to suck the crap out of the toilet bowl, then the waste has no water to wash it down the drain -- leading to blocked drains. "Wash Down" toilets dump the same amount of water on top of the waste, so it is washed down the drain -- no blocked drains. For more go to
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