A clogged toilet can be a mess, often requiring the services of a professional plumber. Here are some helpful things you can do to reduce the likelihood of such an occurrence:
- Never put anything except toilet paper in the toilet. That’s easy to say until you run out of toilet paper and paper towel or tissues are conveniently located on the counter top. While manufacturers design toilet paper to dissolve when mixed with water, paper towels do not dissolve. You may get away with flushing them a time or two, but this isn’t known as the first deadly sin with a toilet for no reason.
- Don’t use “Johnny cakes” or any toilet bowl cleaner that mounts inside the toilet bowl. As the cake dissolves, its mounting wire often inadvertently gets flushed down the toilet. The wire sticks in the toilet trap, where it catches everything you flush thereafter. Removing the wire requires a special tool, as well. Additionally, avoid cake-type cleaners that mount inside the toilet tank, especially those pretty blue ones. The cake eventually ends up on the bottom of the toilet tank where it decomposes into a nasty lump of blue sludge. As this sludge works its way through your toilet, it plugs up the cleaning holes around the rim of the toilet, preventing a proper flush. It won’t be long before you will be forced to replace your toilet.
- Never flush sanitary products or “wipes” down the toilet. While the package says, “safe to dispose of in the toilet,” they, too, don’t dissolve upon contact with water like toilet paper is designed to do. We often pull products like these out of toilets. Plus, if these items don’t hang up in the toilet, they frequently get caught in the sewer line on roots, sharp bends, or bad spots in the drain line.
- Keep combs, brushes, tooth brushes and small toys far away from the toilet if you have small children or grandkids coming to visit. We have lost count of how many miniature cars we have extracted from a toilet only to hear “I wondered where that went!”
- To keep your toilet clean, use only a toilet brush and liquid cleaner. Flush nothing but toilet paper down the toilet. If you do this routinely, you’ll be calling a plumber much less frequently
Remember, in plumbing, “a flush beats a full house,” any day.
