The toilet in my apt has low water pressure and keeps getting clogged. What to do?

I've complained to my landlord who has sent out a plumber a couple of times. Each time they claim they fixed it--but I get home and it's still the same!





It clogs at least once a day. It feels like I spend more time in the bathroom plunging the toilet, than enjoying the rest of my apartment! I usually just plunge the heck out of it, but tonight it's not working. Is there anything else I can try?

The toilet in my apt has low water pressure and keeps getting clogged. What to do?
The problem is not the water pressure in the building. If it has been this way since you moved in then you can bet the problem is the toilet itself. One way to test to see if the sewer lines are blocked in the walls is to fill a 1-gallon bucket with water and pour that right into the center of the toilet bowl as fast as possible. If the toilet flushes normally then the lines are clear and the problem is in the basic design of the toilet. If this is an apartment, odds are that the landlord bought the cleapest toilet he could find, and more often than not, cheap toilets simply do not work well. When you flush it, if the water just swirls around lazily and never glug glugs down all the way, it is probably bad toilet design. The only way to fix this is to throw out the toilet and get a better (more expensive) one. $99 toilets are called 'builder's specials' and are basically garbage. Get one for $200 and it will work much better.





But the landlord does not give a damn if you have to spend all day in the bathroom plunging it. An answer might be to dump several gallons of water on the floor and then tell the landlord that the toilet keeps overflowing. Faced with the risk of water damage to the property and even bigger expense, the landlord might decide it is better to replace the toilet.





I have seen toilets that did not work properly simply because the toilet was a bad design. Simply replacing the toilet with a better model solved the problem. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise; I have seen this too many times.
Reply:If you have a low flow, old toilet, it may not be fixable. If you have low pressure and the pressure is used to assist flush, you might begin by closing and opening the cutoff valve to make sure it is all the way open.


Low flow toilets (required by law) take several forms - the one I just bought (Eljer Titan) works very well and is very quiet. It works by having a tallish tank and only sending the top half through the toilet - greater pressure because of the depth. Others feed the supply water to the bowl along with tank water so the supply water provides more force to push stuff out.
Reply:You could fill a container with about a gallon of water and pour it down the toilet when you flush - it works for my toilet
Reply:That has nothing to do with the water pressure. It is the drain or the vent for the drain. Somewhere in the line (outside at a very low point) there is a cleanout plug. Do yourself a favor and call a plumber for that one. The vent stack should go out the roof and have a top on it that lets the system breath. Sometimes the top gets damaged and animals get in the pipe and clog it up. Again it is an apartment and you may need to call a plumber for that one also. Maybe you can back charge the landlord when you get it fixed.
Reply:Without knowing what kind of toilet (and its inner works) you have, start by taking the lid off the water tank and see how much water is in there. Most toilets have a tall tube, usually white, about an inch in diameter, that comes almost to the top of the tank. The water level should be about 3/4" below the top of that tube. With the top still off, flush the toilet and see how long the 'flapper' stays up to let the water out: a well-functioning toilet will let almost all of the water out of the tank before before the flapper falls down to cover the flush-valve's hole. The flapper is connected to the flush-handle by a chain...if the chain is too loose, the flapper won't come up very high nor will it stay up long enough to empty the tank. If the chain is too tight, the tank will never fill up. Call the management and INSIST that they fix it; ask if their 'plumber' checked the clean-out, the vent pipes, etc.. A last thought: NEVER flush Q-tips, tampons, maxi-pads, paper towels or huge wads of toilet paper. Me, I often pour a big spaghetti-pot full of almost-hot water into a clogged toilet, usually with good results. And NEVER use Drano or LiquidPlumber in a toilet: if you read their labels, they say the same thing.
Reply:This has nothing to do with water pressure. Water pressure doesn't push the crud down the pipe. There are two possible causes that come to mind. One is that the drain pipe from the toilet to the main collection line (lower down) are partially plugged either because there is stuff contricting the flow or the pipe is too small a diameter. The toilet might not be all that well designed either. About the only thing you can do though is double flush. That is, when you are half way done, flush the thing, do some more and then flush again. It might be easier to flush two smaller batches down than one big one.








Kent in SD



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