Fixing Blocked Toilet Repairs: Why Flushing Again Won’t Help

There is nobody in Australia, and even on the planet today, who uses toilets that doesn’t know this: flushing again and again does not unclog a blocked toilet.

Anybody who does this does so out of ignorance. This ignorance will cause the person to waste water and run up their water bill, and even add to the pressure that the toilet system feels because of the blockage.

If you find yourself dealing with this kind of issue, you definitely need a blocked toilet repairs tradesman. The rest of this blog contains elaborate context that explains exactly why you need to contact your nearest (and trusted) emergency plumbing experts for this problem.

Blocked Toilet Repairs: The Anatomy of Blocked Toilets

It is important to understand blocked toilets, especially with respect to the subject of this blog: why repeated flushing does nothing to deal with a blocked toilet.

Before you call a blocked toilet repairs tradesman, you must confirm that you have a blocked toilet. The easiest way to know is by flushing.

If you flush and you find that one pull of the lever doesn’t do the trick, that is a sign you mustn’t ignore. It means there is something big enough to stop water and waste from flowing freely down your toilet pipes.

If your toilet system works, one flush is all you typically need. Two, sometimes, to ensure that everything clears out. So, if flushing twice fails to do the trick, get ready to call a plumber.

Before you do, however, try to flush one more time. If that works, make a mental note to call a plumber for checks. If the third flush doesn’t work, then you have a blocked drain, which means you need a plumber.

Another very important thing you must not overlook is that continuous and forceful flushing can damage your entire sewer line. This damage can even spread to the main sewer line!

The more you flush, the more water pools up in your pipes. And water being as it is, will find a way to keep flowing, which spells danger for your entire plumbing.

The polluted water will leak (causing a damaged pipe which means extra expenses) and possible backup into other drains and your main water supply line. Then you’ll end up not only having to pay for blocked toilet repairs, but general pipe repairs and possibly an entire toilet replacement.

Do not take this for granted. Once flushing becomes hard, professional expertise must be sought.

The Anatomy of a Clog

No toilet clogs on its own, of course. It is your own doing, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Sydney Water reports that wet wipes (including ones described as flushable by manufacturers), lead the hit list. They are responsible for a whopping 75% of sewer blockages that they handle in a year. This work costs them an average of AU$27 million every year, and they handle around 20,000 of such cases in Sydney.

Anything other than toilet paper, pee or poo, usually referred to by professional plumbers as the “3 Ps”, will block your toilet pipes. Be it wet wipes, sanitary products like pads or tampons, or even something as light as cotton wool, you risk blocking your toilet if you try to flush anything other than the 3 Ps.

The toilet blockage happens gradually, not immediately, as long as what was flushed is not one of the 3 Ps. If it happens immediately, then it means someone attempted to flush something bigger than the toilet drain pipes.

Authorities once removed up to a tonne of paper towels and rags in Brisbane and 42 tonnes in Melbourne, before the sewer lines in either city were restored.

Kitchen waste can also lead to you needing blocked toilet repairs. When you try to pour anything other than kitchen wastewater down the kitchen sink, you risk this.

“How?”, you may ask. Well, fats, oils, coffee grounds, food particles, little peelings of fruit, and so on can easily go down your kitchen sink with the wastewater. Because these things should not be there, they settle and congeal into clogs. These clogs can find their way into your toilet drain to cause more problems for you.

And this is the anatomy of a clog. In essence, it is something that forms in your toilet pipes when you try to flush the wrong stuff.

What does this tell you? Do not flush what you’re supposed to trash.

Why Flushing Again Won’t Solve the Clog

Now we have arrived at the meat of the matter.

We have already established that clogs are blockages that lodge themselves between the walls of a pipe. The way they lodge themselves makes it difficult for pee, poo and toilet paper to flow easily from your sewer line to the main sewer line and into the sewer system of your neighbourhood.

Being that a clog is a blockage, why can repeated flushing not force it down into the sewer? Is water flow not powerful enough to dislodge most things?

The answer is simple: A toilet’s tank has been designed to hold a limited amount of water at any time. This water, the designers believe, should be enough to flush the 3 Ps in two tries, maximum.

Clogs mess with this system to trap sewage. No matter what you do, the pressure from the tank cannot go above how it has been designed. This is why the water levels in your toilet bowl keep rising, until you have an overflowing toilet or worse, burst toilet drain pipes.

Let us look at the damage this can do again, so it sticks:

• Clogs affect the toilet bowl trap

The water in your bowl is kept level by a trap in the toilet bowl. As you flush, the trap opens up to allow the sewage through. Once through, the trap shuts to keep the water level in your toilet bowl as it should be.

When there is a clog that blocks the flow of sewage, the trap is forced open. The water that should see the sewage through continues to rise until the bowl is filled up.

• Clogs cause backflow into other drains

Where sewage cannot flow and water is stuck in pipes, it puts pressure on the toilet pipe drain. This can cause the pipe walls to break, and force some of the sewage and polluted water to escape into other drains.

At best, in this situation, your home or property starts to smell. At worst, you start seeing the polluted water and sewage coming out of your bathroom drains and other drains.

• Clogs can force an expensive toilet replacement

If you keep pulling the flushing lever to force the clog into the sewer, you risk breaking your toilet, or parts of it.

What an emergency plumber would have handled easily has now morphed into a problem that requires a full toilet replacement. This could also mean the relaying of your toilet pipe. In essence, you risk spending lots for a problem that could have cost less.

• Clogs waste water

Overflowing toilets and repeated flushes all waste water. Australian toilets hold between nine to twelve litres of water, which means that each failed flush wastes this much water.

The effect is felt in your water bills. In the end, you will be paying extra for water, while having to deal with costs of blocked toilet repairs.

Only a good plumbing team can help you.

Other Consequences of Ignoring A Clog

• Cost consequences

In Australia, standard toilet maintenance tasks or fixes cost between AU$100 and AU$300. Blocked toilet repairs resulting from ignoring clogs, however, can cost thousands.

There was a famous case in the news about a toilet repair that cost AU$16,000. A homeowner in a suburban neighbourhood ignored a toilet clog until it became a huge problem for his whole block. The plumbers had to excavate the sewer line just to get to the clog.

Clogs are jokes that your finances will not find funny.

• Property damage

Where there’s property damage, there’s also cost implications. But you need to understand the scale of property damage you could be dealing with by ignoring that clog.

When the clogs force the waste water to break your pipes, the backflow can affect everywhere and anywhere. If it only affects other drains, your problem is manageable (to an extent). When it starts to leak from your walls and ceilings, your problem becomes unmanageable.

The backflow can get so bad that it seeps through walls and floors, ruining your property and causing you to either spend tens of thousands on renovation, or even sell the property at a loss.

Some insurance providers term this negligence and will not cover it. This means you’ll be all on your own, facing property damage that could bankrupt you.

• Public health consequences

When clogs cause backflow, the main water system could become polluted. Mould could start appearing on your walls and floors. Even the soil around your home could become contaminated.

Sewage issues are not treated with kid gloves in Australia because of these threats that they can pose to the environment.

• Quality of life consequences

This one is probably the most stressful consequence of ignoring a clog to deal with.

You certainly do not want to walk into your home and retch or pinch your nose because everywhere smells. You certainly don’t want to have to take a rain check every time your turn comes to host brunch. Even your kitchen could be one uncomfortable for you to cook in. It’s just not worth the stress to ignore a clog.

Again, you cannot ignore a clog and wish it away. You need an emergency plumber on speed dial. This plumber will show up immediately if you call them concerning a clog, in and out of typical business hours.

Blocked Toilet Repairs: When to Call the Pros

We have established that you need to get ready to place the call if the second flush does nothing. But for safety sake (and for the sake of your finances), you should try once more.

We have also established that you should definitely place the call if the third one does nothing.

If the third flush happens to clear the clog, what you need is to schedule a drain inspection. If you have already scheduled maintenance tasks before you encounter this difficulty, you should move it up.

Everything described above involves two to three flushes. One is all it takes, in many cases, to cause an emergency.

If after one flush, you noticed the water level in the toilet bowl rising, you have an emergency. One flush, sometimes, can cause sewage to back up into other drains and out of floor grates. You have an emergency if this happens.

At this point, it isn’t time for DIY tricks. You need to call your plumber immediately.

Thankfully, most plumbing companies and even local councils have plumbing teams that are ready to deploy when their emergency plumbing lines ring. These calls will cost extra if made outside of business hours, but what’s a couple extra hundred dollars when compared to potential thousands in property damage, council fines (for health hazards) and water bills?

Emergency plumbers are some of the most battle-ready (and battle-hardened) tradesmen there are. The issues they deal with could cause severe consequences, and so, they always come prepared. They typically arrive within an hour after they’re called and contain the mess within another hour (or two, depending on how bad it is).

Whether the call is from private homeowners or commercial customers (cafés, offices, stores, libraries, etc.), they have the right tools and knowledge to handle these cases.

Blocked Toilet Repairs: Why Professionals Make the Difference

One time, a soccer kick about team was looking for an extra man. A semi-pro player on holiday was at the playground that day. He was watching the lads have fun and enjoying them. He noticed the team looking for an extra man, and volunteered. They let him join them.

It was all a blur for everyone. The semi-pro player was easily the best on the turf. Even his teammates even struggled to keep up with him sometimes.

They invited him to a pub and got talking after the session. When they found out that he was on an actual team as a semi-pro player, they laughed heartily.

The revelation made them realise the skill gap.

If a semi-pro soccer player ran rings around regular guys having a kick about, imagine what a pro on the levels of an A-league starter would do in that setting.

This is the kind of difference that you’d notice when someone with professional expertise handles broken toilet repairs and if you had tried to do it yourself.

The famous DIY baking soda and vinegar mixture is also a good shout to unclog your toilet drain. Still, it can never pack the punch that professionally handled high-power jets pack.

Some property owners think themselves experts enough and buy chemical drain cleaners from stores. These aren’t a bad idea either, as long as you follow the instructions on the bottles to the letter. But toilet clogs are dangerously resilient.

You might go through the whole chemical drain cleaner shelf before the water level in your toilet bowl drops even just a little. Worse, you might start corroding your pipes because those cleaners are not supposed to be used often.

You might try plungers, wire coat hangers or even a small plumbing snake. These can work if the clog is recent and if it’s not too far into your drain pipes. Sometimes, your clog might even be infiltrating tree roots from your yard. Plungers and snakes will never work in such cases.

A pro will use all these methods and get even better results than you’d ever get. But because the aim is not to one-up you but to prevent a disaster, they arrive at the scene with an arsenal of the best tools.

Instead of a drain snake or a plunger, they’d whip out a proper toilet auger, most times motorised, because they need to cut through the clog. If the clog is too tough, they would whip out an even bigger tool: a motorised high-powered auger that only they can manipulate.

These types of augers can even damage your pipes if used carelessly. This is the kind of calm and collectedness that only a pro can bring to blocked toilet repairs.

If this fails, they have high-pressure jets that shoot water out at very high pressures. The pressure that these letters produce are enough to damage sewer lines. The professionals handle them expertly, focusing only on dismantling and pulverising the clog.

The one thing that makes professionals, however, is their diagnostic process.

In soccer training, players are taught to read opponent moves before making theirs. So if they see you running at them from the right, for instance, they run away from you from the left to evade you.

It’s the same with doctors, who, before treating you, run all kinds of tests, check blood pressure, pulse and all that. Whatever they learn from their diagnoses will help them draw up a treatment plan for you.

Your plumber also does this. They do not just start treating the problem without learning of its cause and extent.

They’ll do this by sending a video camera down the sewer line to see the extent of the clog. The type of clog (tree roots, fatbergs, sanitary pads, big balls of hair mixed with soap scum) will let them know what tools to use in clearing it out. This also shows them what other damage it must have caused.

Depending on the diagnosis, you could be getting clog removal and pipe repairs (relining of the pipes or excavation of the whole block like the story referenced earlier). You could also be getting an entire toilet suite replacement.

Nothing they do is by “instinct”, even though some problems might require this. Nothing they do is random, either, because every step they take is calculated and methodical.

This is why pros like JAB Plumbing Solutions or Alkimos Plumbing & Gas make the difference. This is why blocked toilet repairs are not something you randomly DIY.

This is also why this service costs what it does too.

Preventing Future Blockages

The most important way to prevent future blockages is to never flush anything other than the 3 Ps: pee, poo and (toilet) paper. Please, throw all wet wipes, sanitary pads (or sanitary products in general), paper towels, rags, cotton swabs, and so on in the bin.

Clean your toilet drain pipes often, too. Pour hot water down the bowl often to do this. Even though it largely cools down while in the pipe, it would slowly break down any clog that’s forming.

Use mild toilet cleaners to do this as well. You can also use the baking soda-vinegar mixture for this.

Don’t forget to check the strength of your toilet’s flushing mechanism often. Sometimes, poor flush power contributes to these things.

The second most important one is to schedule regular sewer line maintenance. Call a plumber to check your drain pipes with their cameras and to use their letters to clean out your sewer lines once in a while.

No matter how much you spend on fixes, early prevention is always better.

Conclusion

Blocked toilet repairs can cost you your peace of mind. This, however, is only if you keep ignoring the clog that is obviously in the way of your normal toilet functions.

Flushing against and against does not help. You are wasting water, time, and damaging your toilet. After the third flush attempt fails, please call a plumber.

Professional plumbers will cost you a little more outside of business hours, true. Still, the cost of their services is always better to deal with than property damage and fines from your local council.

Contact Plumber Sydney today and buy back your peace of mind.