With such a problem as a clogged toilet, almost everyone met. The situation can be confusing or force you to get together, take your will into a fist and start clearing the blockage. It is good if there is a man in the house who will take on this unpleasant business. What if he just doesn't know how to clean the toilet? Then this article will help him learn to cope with a purely male homework on his own.
First of all, you need to try to remember what could get stuck in the toilet, obviously, something was poured along with water and not noticed. Depending on the foreign object in the sewer, one of three ways to eliminate the blockage is chosen: chemical, household, mechanical.
Read this article:
How to choose a blockage removal method
organic blockage
Most often, the toilet becomes clogged due to settling on the walls of the pipe and the passage of organic waste. They accumulate for a long time and narrow the passage, interfering with the normal flushing of feces. If the owners are sure that this is the reason, you need to use chemicals that will dissolve the organic matter. Chemicals are sold in different forms: liquid, granular, powder.
All of them are very powerful solvents. They are based on alkali or acid. They must be handled with extreme care.
You need to pour or pour the product into the toilet and leave it like that for several hours. Rinse afterwards with plenty of hot water.
How to clean the toilet at home if there are no store-bought products at hand? You can do without them. There is always whiteness, soda, vinegar, citric acid in the house.
Whiteness is poured into the toilet and wait several hours until the blockage dissolves. If you decide to use citric acid, you will need at least 5 bags that fall into the toilet. Before that, a minimum of water should remain in it.
Another way: first pour a pack of soda, then pour a bottle of vinegar. A head of foam will appear, but it will soon settle down.
You can understand that the organic blockage has dissolved by lowering the water level. But don't rinse right away. You need to let the aggressive substances work properly.
Even if the blockage has not happened, from time to time it is necessary to carry out preventive work: pour acid-containing agents to dissolve lime deposits on the inside of the pipe and the toilet passage.
Toilet full of rubbish
The second most common cause of a clogged toilet is the ingress of debris into its passage or pipe. It can be undissolved toilet paper, construction debris, table waste, and much more that was accidentally or intentionally thrown down the toilet. How to clear the blockage in the toilet in this case?
Chemical solutions will not help here, you will have to deal with it in a domestic way.
You can try to remove this blockage with a plunger. The up and down movements of the plunger will cause the water to move, dragging debris along with it. With a sharp rise up, the lump of debris is rarefied, and it is easier to wash it off. By the way, if a plunger is not at hand, a plastic bottle with a cut bottom will help. To clear a blockage with a bottle, you need to take hold of the neck and act like a piston, creating water movement. But, if the remains of cement mortar were poured into the toilet or a large rag was thrown, the plunger and the bottle will not help.
The toilet is clogged with a large object
And how to eliminate a blockage in the toilet if a rag, a large potato or other object gets into it? First of all, try to get the object that caused the blockage with your hand. To do this, put on to scoop water out of the toilet, put a longer rubber glove on your hand, and cover your mouth and nose with a bandage soaked, for example, in perfume. Otherwise, the smell can make you sick. Then stick your hand into the passage and try to grab the object. And with a rag, this may well work out, but you may not be able to grab the potato with your hand, but you can hook it with a wire hook.
Nothing will come of it if clay gets inside the toilet bowl and clumps into a lump, stone or broken glass. In this case, it will be possible to remove the foreign body with a cable.
The cable is a plumber's tool. It is a flexible rod with a swivel handle on one end and a sharp tip on the other. There may not be a tip, but instead of it there is a disheveled sharp wire, such burrs can go along the entire length. By the way, a cable with sharp wire cannot be used in a plastic pipe, as it can damage its walls. The tip and burrs of the cable are needed for winding and pulling foreign objects out of the pipe.
To work with a cable, you need a partner. One person pushes it with the tip forward into the toilet passage and pipe, the other turns the handle. Thus, a hole is drilled in the cork, and water escapes through it. Now you need to use your hands to remove from the toilet passage what is stuck. You need to work carefully, as the foreign body can be sharp and injure the hand. Flush the toilet several times and make sure that the water leaves with good pressure. Rinse and dry the cable so that it does not rust.
It may happen that the lump is not stuck in the toilet passage, but somewhere in the pipe. Then it will not be possible to remove it by hand even after working with a cable. In this case, you will have to disconnect the sewer pipes and each time look for a blockage with a cable until it is detected. In the most difficult cases, you have to dismantle the toilet.
How to avoid clogged toilet
If you don’t throw anything into the sewer, then the question of how to clean the toilet at home can remain rhetorical. So, what can not be washed off:
- toilet paper;
- rags;
- baby diapers, ladies' pads;
- cotton pads, tampons, napkins;
- food waste, including tea leaves;
- fish giblets and scales;
- a mouse from a mousetrap (sometimes this happens);
- water after peeling potatoes, carrots, mushrooms;
- cigarette butts and matches;
- fatty water;
- cat litter;
- contraceptives;
- remnants of paint, lime, cement mixture, gypsum.
The list is almost endless, plumbers can confirm that almost anything smaller than a drain hole has been removed from clogged pipes. There should always be a trash can in the toilet, then the hand will not reach into the toilet to throw out the garbage. Construction waste, even liquid, must be disposed of in a trash can.
To prevent blockages, once every 2 weeks, pour products containing acid or alkali into the toilet bowl. At home, always have such devices as a toilet brush, plunger, cable, rubber gloves.
It is not a shame to once again remind the neighbors from above what throwing the above items into the toilet can turn into, especially if they already had a similar sin behind them. After all, they can throw garbage, and the toilets of those who live on the lower floors will pour through the top. And yet, any man should at least theoretically know what to do if the toilet is clogged.
