Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: GigaBuist on September 26, 2011, 10:19:29 PM
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Had a problem with a toilet in the house the other day. Liquids went down fine. Add in some solids and it'd stop right up but you could plunge it down. So, I shoved a heavy duty auger down into the thing and started ramming wondering what the heck the clog could be. Wife was positive the toddler didn't shove a toy down in there.
Some broken bits of my nose hair trimmer floated into the bowl after a few rams.
*sigh*
So, trying to figure out a way to get this thing out. I'm probably going to have to unmount the toilet and ram it out from the other end, but I'd rather not. Thinking I might try and unlodge it with a thin rod, then use a powerful magnet on the end of said rod to coax it out, or maybe a powerful enough magnet held to the side of the toilet drain system will work too. Or maybe the shop vac stuck in there, with some wet towels to provide a seal will do the trick. Not sure.
Any other parents got some tips?
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One of those automotive "oh nuts I dropped a nut into the bowels of the engine" magnets on a telescoping rod.
Bend it so it will follow the toilet contours and bump into the trimmer.
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Those telescopic rods don't bend, they kink and break. BTDT with telescopic radio antennas. They're the same thing.
Try a strong magnet duct taped to a wire coat hanger. Or flush a strong magnet tied to a strong cord down the toilet.
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Got a wire-fish?
One of those flexible rolls of metal used to fish cat-5 cable through walls or conduit? Might be able to snag it with that.
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I've got a flexible rod with a retractable claw on the end of it (think the coin-op crane game, but with a 2" claw that bites so hard it'll hurt to put your finger in there) but it can't get a purchase on the nose hair trimmer. It's round, smooth, and the thing thing that goes up your nose is what I already broke off.
I do have magnets though, strong enough that you wouldn't want to put your finger between it and metal. The magnet on a string thing sounds like an awful good idea. I suspect that'll work. Good idea, RocketMan.
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And if that doesn't work, there's always detcord. >:D
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My wife dropped a sample size deodorant in the toilet just as she flushed it. It got stuck in the toilet and would not go down and would not come out. I had to pull the toilet. I was not happy.
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A stack of the 2x4 Lego Blocks 8 blocks high will not come out until you 1) remove the toilet from the floor, and 2) break the porcelain u-pipe so that you have to go buy and install an entirely new toilet. :mad: :mad: :mad:
You might just want to open the Lowe's Depot ad right now and ask your wife to pick out a new one from the ones they have listed as on-sale this week. :P
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Sometimes you just have to yank the thing out and drag it outside and be done with it.
jim
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pulling a toilet is a 6 minute operation that can spare you 6 hours of fiddling
wax rings are 6 bucks
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What Harold said.
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If it isn't wedged good and tight up the porcelain bendie part. Then you are screwed.
Probably easier to replace the whole thing. Maybe you can sneak one in from Canada.
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pulling a toilet is a 6 minute operation that can spare you 6 hours of fiddling
wax rings are 6 bucks
This.
Sigh - when my son flushed his sister's Poly-Pocket trailer, I learned about wax rings and re-installing a toilet.
Sometimes there is just no other way.
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Way back in the mid 90's I was working a short term I.T. contract at S.C. Johnson Wax Co. in their newest building, just a bit south of Milwaukee. It had all auto-flush toilets.
The I.T. Department there had a young German intern. His issue pager fell off his belt into the toilet, and as he whipped around to try and grab it, the sensor went off, and it was flushed by the powerful pressure-head tankless mechanism.
Shame-faced, he admitted to management what happened to the pager, and maintenance was notified. The toilet was clogged, but the pager wasn't in the toilet. Somehow it had navigated the S-curve and had gotten lodged in the waste pipe in the floor. Snakes couldn't get it out.
A day later, the stall had it's door removed, was caution taped off, and the toilet was gone.
A day after that, that men's room was closed, and you could hear jackhammering. :laugh:
Poor kid, he never lived it down after that. Some guys in I.T. started calling him "Toilettenjunge".
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I'm sure I've told this story before, but what the...
Shortly after we were married, my wife tried her hand at cooking something that didn't come in a can. She made chicken soup. She took a whole chicken, cut the meat off the bones, then tried to flush the bones down the toilet.
At that age and time, I had zero knowledge of plumbing, except for using a plunger, so I tried forever to plunge the chicken skeleton out of the s trap. Eventually a plumber was called, and it cost us the equivalent of day's pay for each of us.
Expensive soup.
"Nose hair trimmer" sounds funnier, though.
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pulling a toilet is a 6 minute operation that can spare you 6 hours of fiddling
wax rings are 6 bucks
yea, but it's so damn gross... [barf]
:lol:
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Wife 1.0 managed to drop a bunch of Q-tips down the toilet one time. After that solid matter would clog the toilet roughly every fourth or fifth flush. Of course, no amount of plunging, snaking or drain cleaning chemicals was able to clear things up.
After pulling the toilet I found a number of the Q-tips had managed to neatly lay themselves across the exit of the 'S' trap, blocking things quite nicely.
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Just face up to the inevitable -- buy a new water closet and install it. You know the old one has to come off, and you know it'll break trying to dislodge the obstruction.
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Toto, get the one that will flush soccer balls, or was it golf balls, I can't remember... some kind of ball. there's two sizes, get the bigger more expensive one. you won't be disappointed. ;)
And make sure the danglies are clear before you go a hittin' that flush handle! :O
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Toto, get the one that will flush soccer balls, or was it golf balls, I can't remember... some kind of ball. there's two sizes, get the bigger more expensive one. you won't be disappointed.
I want one that will flush bowling balls.
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THAT"S WHAT IT WAS!! :lol:
You wouldn't think the Japanese would worry about flushing bowling balls. I kean, how big of a crap can they take? Excluding Sumo wrestlers of course. Probably where it all started, with the Sumo wrestlers. "If it can handle a bowling ball it can handle a Sumo wrestler" was their slogan a while back. Not sure what it is now.
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pulling a toilet is a 6 minute operation that can spare you 6 hours of fiddling
wax rings are 6 bucks
Agreed. You could have been done by now. Send wifey for a wax ring and if you aren't ready for it by the time she gets back, turn in the man card.
I'm going to bestow upon you the plumbing knowledge which was bestowed upon me by the great handymen of old.
"You are smarter than any plumber I ever met, you are just scared to take it apart. Take it apart. Find the problem. Fix it. Put it back together."
Procedure:
1. Water shut off
2. Flush to empty tank
3. Soak up remaining water in the bowl with a towel
4. Unhook water line
5. Unscrew nuts from mounting bolts.
6. Lift.
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I want one that will flush bowling balls.
In our first apartment, my wife and I had what our friends called "the atomic toilet". It was pressurized, and would flush anything. The whoosh sound it made when flushing could probably have been heard down the hall of the apartments on our floor.
pulling a toilet is a 6 minute operation that can spare you 6 hours of fiddling
Not quite that easy when the toilet is in its own closet, with 6" to spare on either side, and you're an old man with a bad back. ;) Our toilet has a wax ring that's leaking very, very slightly, and I'm just going to wait until it gets worse before either injuring my back again or spending $$ for a plumber.
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Oh, and since no one has mentioned it.
Invest in a new nose hair trimmer.
You'll thank me for it. ;)
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Procedure:
1. Water shut off
2. Flush to empty tank
3. Soak up remaining water in the bowl with a towel
4. Unhook water line
5. Unscrew nuts from mounting bolts.
6. Lift.
Well versed in the procedure. I''m the one that put the toilet in 4-5 months ago. There's just not much room to wiggle around in that tiny bathroom and I'm prone to throwing out my back when doing suck tasks.
We were out of town yesterday for our anniversary. I should have time tonight to try fishing with a magnet for a bit, but failing that just pull the thing off.
Thanks for the suggestions.
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of course doing the job with a trapped dooty is hazard duty pay
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Is there something that you could flush on a string and then pull back? One of those cocktail umbrellas maybe.
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det cord on a string
it's the toilet bangalore torpedo
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det cord on a string
it's the toilet bangalore torpedo
That's youtube-worthy !!!
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My problem is that I've got some rather old rusty and fragile soil-pipe flanges. Whenever I'm contemplating lifting the toilet for repair, or just a flooring job, I have to consider it may be the last time the T-bolts will grab on there without breaking it.
Then you're looking at breaking off cast iron pipe which is either in the basement joists beneath the sub-floor in the case of the first floor bathroom, or actually in the floor and the main wet-wall of the house on the second. :-X
Last time I did the upstairs toilet 9 years ago, it was floating 2" ABOVE THE FLANGE because there were FIVE LAYERS of old flooring that had been put down in there and the previous owners had simply tried to seat it on double rings. I still have no idea where they found T-bolts that long.
I already put one of those "flange saver" thin shim rings on there to give the T-bolts something to grab onto and it barely worked. If it gets moved again, I'm likely doing some cast-iron work. :P
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My problem is that I've got some rather old rusty and fragile soil-pipe flanges. Whenever I'm contemplating lifting the toilet for repair, or just a flooring job, I have to consider it may be the last time the T-bolts will grab on there without breaking it.
Then you're looking at breaking off cast iron pipe which is either in the basement joists beneath the sub-floor in the case of the first floor bathroom, or actually in the floor and the main wet-wall of the house on the second. :-X
Last time I did the upstairs toilet 9 years ago, it was floating 2" ABOVE THE FLANGE because there were FIVE LAYERS of old flooring that had been put down in there and the previous owners had simply tried to seat it on double rings. I still have no idea where they found T-bolts that long.
I already put one of those "flange saver" thin shim rings on there to give the T-bolts something to grab onto and it barely worked. If it gets moved again, I'm likely doing some cast-iron work. :P
This is actually a LOT easier than you think.
The flange actually sits around the outside of the pipe, and the oakum and lead is poured from above. If you scrape away the wax ring and crud, you will see that the lead ring is completely exposed at the top. A few minutes with a 3/16 drill bit and you can get most of it out. at that point a sharp crack with the hammer will separate the flange from the pipe and you can either lift it out or break the flange. You now have a clean pipe end coming out of the floor. If the pipe is protruding, cut it back to flush or slightly below.
Then you go to Home Depot and snag one of these:
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siouxchief.com%2FResource_%2FProduct_Image%2F1478%2F%2FRegular%2FC886gp.jpg&hash=1a42e149390600d24b372373462e9924b86fcafe) (http://www.siouxchief.com/Drainage/ResidentialDrainage/Closet-Flanges/Push-Tite.VZ8US)
It pushes down inside 4" cast pipe and makes an excellent but flexible seal. Rotate it to where you want it and affix to the floor with ( 8 ) #12x1" stainless screws. I did this in my own bathroom and it made a very sturdy toilet mount and was so easy that I was kind of embarrassed afterward that I had originally tried to save the old flange with some of those half-rings and other nonsense. Don't be scared of this, it's easy.
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A winner is me. I got it.
Yeah, I let it sit in there a while. Wife and I had a scheduled vacation and then she had us spend last night putting together a toy kitchenette for our daughter that had arrived. Not a big deal, we've got other bathrooms.
Tried to shop vac the thing out. Nope. Gave up, took the whole toilet off, laid it on its side, shoved my super industrial snake up its backside and gave it a go. After pushing the entire toilet two feet across the floor trying to clear the blockage it bumped up against the wall, which was nice. No more chasing the toilet.
Couldn't get enough force behind it to clear it out. So, took the tank off, hauled it outside onto the deck, flipped it upside down, shoved my apparatus up there and went beast on it. My daughter (20 mos. old) cried a bit seeing daddy grunting and bouncing a toilet around the deck.
But, I got the bugger out, put the toilet back in place, and cleaned the whole mess up.
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hauled it outside onto the deck, flipped it upside down, shoved my apparatus up there and went beast on it. My daughter (20 mos. old) cried a bit seeing daddy grunting and bouncing
I'd probably cry too if I had to see that. [barf]
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another master plumber!
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another master plumber!
Only if he had more the 2.5" of butt crack showing. :lol: