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Author:
Joan C (CT)
Every year around this time, a ground floor toilet starts refusing to flush. The first thing that happens is that water draining from the kitchen sink or the dishwasher will cause big loud bubbles to come up in the haunted toilet - BLOOP! BLOOP! BLOOP! Sometimes with enough force so water flies out and lands on the floor.
After the bubbling up, either right away or days later, the HT refuses to flush. This seems to happen more often when there are solids involved, however it frequently chokes up on just liquid and toilet paper, too.
The plumber has removed and reseated the toilet on a new wax ring, replaced the flexible water feed hose to the tank, taken the lid off and checked and adjusted the float & etc., snaked out all the pipes leading away from HT (but I don't think he snaked out to the street); replaced a section of section of PVC in the basement so that it slopes downward more.
Until now, I've always been able to get this toilet going again. Sometimes all I had to do was flush the toilet on the second floor a few times, and this would cause everything in the HT to sink out of the bowl, after which I could get it to flush. Then it might be fine for days, weeks, or months (in the summer), or it might choke up again the next time it was used. If flushing the second floor toilet didn't work, I'd use the plunger on the HT, and once I got good suction going, something would shift and the toilet would be flushable again.
Last week plunging the HT stopped working, but I was able to clear it by flushing the upstairs toilet about twelve times. A day or two later, I went down cellar and found water on the basement floor under the pipe coming down from the toilet, and at the opposite end of the cellar where the iron waste pipe goes out to the street. (The water there came up out of a vertical open-topped piece of PVC that the downstairs washer empties into.) Now the toilet is just completely backed up. Plunging does nothing, and I don't want to try the dozen upstairs flushes method again, for fear of causing more flooding in the basement. I tried a bucket flush, so now the toilet's filled to the rim.
Both toilets were installed in 2005, and what's hard to understand is that both worked like champions until the fall of 2012, when this problem suddenly started.
The other weird thing is that for three years this problem has started every year in the fall, and it always ends in late spring. Every year. I might think that it has something to do with the ground freezing and affecting the waste pipe to the street, except that it starts every fall before the ground freezes, and ends well after it thaws. I was thinking it had to do with the vent pipe on the roof getting filled up with acorns from the oak trees in my back yard, but then I read on here that a blocked vent pipe just makes toilets flush better.
Any insights or advice gratefully appreciated!
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Author:
m & m (MD)
..."The water there came up out of a vertical open-topped piece of PVC that the downstairs washer empties into..."
This is pretty good evidence that your main house drain to street needs to be snaked.
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Author:
Joan C (CT)
I was just trying to figure out whether to call the Rooter co., so that was just what I needed to hear. Thanks!
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Author:
Joan C (CT)
If I could ask a further question - is it possible that the condition of the waste pipe to the street has been the cause of all the problems I mentioned with the toilet? Without any of the sinks or the other toilet backing up?
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Author:
bernabeu (SC)
yes
==============================================
"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638
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Author:
jeff h (NJ)
I would go up on the roof and flush the vent pipe with a garden hose
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Author:
Joan C (CT)
Got the waste pipe snaked out today, and currently all the plumbing in the house is working fine, including the problem toilet.
I don't know, though. The last time I had to get that pipe snaked out was almost exactly two years ago, and now that I think of it, that's when the toilet started acting up in the first place. I guess cleaning out that pipe didn't cause the toilet problem, but it didn't seem to help either.
If the toilet seizes up again - and given its track record, there's every reason to expect it will - I'll try getting the roof vent cleaned out. My plumbing-heating guy said there's no way that could be the problem. However, last time he was here working on the toilet, I caught sight of him out in the back yard, looking up at the vent with a thoughtful expression, so maybe he's starting to wonder.
Thanks for all the input and suggestions.
Edited 1 times.
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