My toilet backs-up or drains slowly alot. Plunging sometimes solves it, but waiting for it to drain down and continually flushing it again works well, too.

Clue:The bathtub right beside it drains fine.

Clue:The stack vent is full of water. If I stand on the roof and look down it, i see water about 5 inches from the top.

Question 1: I am thinking about taking the toilet out to look at the pipes. Is this a waste of time and is it hard to do?

Question 2: The stack vent should not have any water in it, I believe. How do I Troubleshoot this one? The only 2 parts of the stack i can see is the part on the roof, and the part in the attic.

Thank You. I hope I have provided meaningful info. Ronn (jtolkien@yesIC.com)

 

quote:<HR>Originally posted by mrplunger:
My toilet backs-up or drains slowly alot. Plunging sometimes solves it, but waiting for it to drain down and continually flushing it again works well, too.

Clue:The bathtub right beside it drains fine.

Clue:The stack vent is full of water. If I stand on the roof and look down it, i see water about 5 inches from the top.

Question 1: I am thinking about taking the toilet out to look at the pipes. Is this a waste of time and is it hard to do?

Question 2: The stack vent should not have any water in it, I believe. How do I Troubleshoot this one? The only 2 parts of the stack i can see is the part on the roof, and the part in the attic.

Thank You. I hope I have provided meaningful info. Ronn (jtolkien@yesIC.com)<HR>

I have incountered a couple of times where there was a stick down it the mainline vent, this would cause the toilet to plug and nothing else, it would unplug and later plug up, if you see water in the vent then pulling the toilet is useless.

Do you have a two-way cleanout out side where you can run a cable back towards the house.

If you can get the water to leave the vent and then take a mirror on a sunny day you might beable to tell if what I described is what it could be.

Best Regards Plumber2000
www.atozplumbing.com

 

And I would try snaking the vent with a snake long enough to reach bottom from roof, too. Take a water hose up to flush. Snake out everything near toilet. Like 2000 said, pulling toilet won't help. A toilet has its own trap built-in. This sounds like it has to do with drainline near toilet or vent stack. Good Luck!

 

Hi:mrplunger

Although I am not a plummer, I would suggest you run a plummers snake down the roof air vent pipe first.

Once you do this, with the garden hose, run water down the pipe to flush out anything you loosened up with the snake.

As long as that roof vent pipe is clogged up, no air will get down it and therefore the plumming system will not function.

I find no reason why you shouldn't remove the toilet either. If you have already gone this far, why not remove the toilet and also run the snake down the toilet drain too.

There is no connection between the toilet drains or drains. These two drain types are not connected anywhere's in the house. Therefore, the reason why the toilet's water doesn't backup into the sink or shower.

There are also cleanout drains for both the toilets and sinks/showers/washer etc. outside the house. The two there are also not connected.

You may also want to run the snake into them. I would also reccommend you flush them out with the garden hose water too after snaking them.

Once you have completed this, all the plumming in the house should work just fine.

Now you can rest easy and enjoy a beer. hahaha

Good Luck,
TomBartco

 

Plumber2000 is right on the money with the inspection. See if you can suppend use of this toilet / bathroom for enough time to get it drain.

I don't depend on the sun. I have a small military flashlight on lanyard which generates a bright beam. I put that on a string and lower it to do the inspection.

The other advantage to that by marking the point on the string when I pull it back out the string distance gives me the exact distance down to my point of interest.

Like he said there is an object stuck in the junction, probably where somebody has flushed something down the toilet.

I found a small toy teddy bear like that. The soft toys go right through the toilet but don't make the connection in the drain.

Make you a bet it is one of them beenie babies.

Snaking it without an inspection risks just pushing it further into the main.

The key is the inspection to know what you are dealing with before going to nuclear weapons to blast it out.