Hello all. Please can someone help. My brand new toilet somehow got blocked. So, I poured a cap full of caustic soda down it and some boiling water. Nothing happened. So I kept doing it, so much so that the crystals have totally hardened and now, the hole has almost totally blocked up and none of the waste is being flushed away. How can I dissolve the totally rock hard caustic soda. Can I salvage my toilet?? Can it be cleared away. (Almost 10 days now). Thank you for your help.
If this is an accurate description, then be very very careful. Caustic soda can "set" like this and be difficult to dissolve.
A fundamental problem is that if you have a blockage from more "conventional" products beyond your new blockage, dissolving the caustic soda still won't solve the problem (although if you can get caustic soda solution through to them this may help).
Remember that caustic soda solution is *very* nasty if you get any in your eyes or even on your skin. If you promote a rapid reaction with boiling, etc, you can get spray.
Experienced chemists know how to dissolve granules in a small amount of water by allowing it to get hot from the dissolution reaction but that may be difficult in this geometry. There is also a risk of cracking the porcelain from differential thermal expansion if some bits get much hotter than others.
Someone else mentioned vinegar, this is a good and relatively safe way to dissolve it, but assuming you have perhaps 500g of pure caustic soda there then you may need 50 litres of vinegar. (ICBA to do the calculation). What I think I might do is half-fill the pan with water, then start dribbling in some brick acid, stirring it with a plastic or wooden stick, and look for signs of a reaction. Pour in maybe a litre stopping if there are signs that the reaction is speeding up. Leave it overnight and try to establish by poking whether you have started to clear it. If it is draining significantly, then repeat.
If not, the problem is unless you get some indicator paper (readily available on eBay) you won't know whether the liquid in the bowl is acidic or alkaline. If it is acidic, then it is not particularly dangerous, but it means it is not reacting effectively. If it is alkaline, then the approach is working but more acid is needed, and the alkaline liquid needs to be handled with more care.
I'd know what to do at this stage. You'd need to find someone with good A-level chemistry from 50 years ago, or a more recent chemistry graduate. Or a fireman. Or perhaps an experienced old-school plumber, but do explain to them how you got where you are.
I would have thought that given the caustic soda has already been added to the pan, most of the exothermal reaction would have already passed. The logic thing to me is to add water, as you suggest slowly. A pan full of water would dissolve the caustic soda. And then hopefully diffuse its way to the blockage.
However, most toilet blockages I have come across are down to foreign materials and I suspect the OP's problem is no different.
Yes, there is an old saying, when you find yourself in a hole stop digging. I would say that it could be cleared but you might need some acid or maybe take the toilet ot and mechanically clear it. It kinds of makes one wonder about the installation if it gets so easily blocked in the first place though. I wonder if it was in reply to a very old post, but as the joke goes, we now have nothing to go on!
The OP gave the reason why he poured caustic soda and boiling water down the pan as a blockage. What he didn't indicate if his NEW toilet had been previously clear just that it had become blocked. He may now have two problems, the original blockage and the partial blockage due his "cure".
Probably correct, the original problem may be down to anything from flushing wet wipes. flushing the centre tube from the bog roll or just a massive shit combined with half the worlds supply of fluffy bog paper.
Plunging the bowl will have removed all of these. One way of plunging is to get a mop, cover the head of the mop in a plastic dustbin bag and shove it in the bowl. Moving the mop up and down usually shifts blockages near to the pan. On removing the mop remove the dustbin bag by turning it inside out. This is probably not possible now with his secondary blockage of caustic soda.
A minimum water velocity is needed to shift the solids. With less water available, its velocity is increased by narrowing the throat of the toilet. At least, that's what I've always assumed.
Mechanical clearing should not be attempted, because a dangerous chemical is involved.
Adding acid by titration is possible, but there is a danger from the exothermic nature of the reaction, depending on what you use. It could splatter.
If you need assistance, drive to the nearest fire station, and while the guy out front having a smoke won't have the answer, the fire hall captain knows who to phone.
Don't ask a plumber to stick the plumbing snake in that vat of chemicals. It won't hurt the snake, but he will need to wash the snake off, and a mess could ensue. If he walks out with the snake unwashed, there could be NaOH on the carpeting.
While it's not a Hazmat situation (yet), it does not take very much faffing about to turn it into a disaster.
Once the chemical portion is taken care of, the plumber can then inspect the waste pipe below the toilet for chemical damage. You can put pinholes in copper, with drain cleaner. And the drain cleaner in this case, has been sitting in the pipe for ten days.
Using the brand name of the drain cleaner product and the part number, a Google will give the MSDS safety data sheet, and that will give the chemical composition. You can even take the bottle of drain cleaner to the Fire Station with you, for identification purposes, so they pull the correct MSDS for it. I notice a few of the caustic products, have practically no track-ability at all, so it's hard to grab the correct MSDS.
This is especially important, if you completely get the chemical type wrong, and it's a strong acid and not a strong base. Some drain cleaners are NaOH, some are H2SO4, with little on the outside of the bottle offering suitable details. I thought we'd learned the consequences of this kind of ignorance years ago - MSDS is your friend. It's everybodies friend. It helps keep the firemen safe.
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