Browse Forums DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 8Jan 13, 2014 1:21 pm 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 9Jan 13, 2014 1:26 pm SaveH2O robbie_p About 1 meter from the toilet, outside the house, I am able to open the lid of the main toilet outlet and see the toilet water flowing down slowly after flushing. This tells me the blockage is in the toilet and not the main drain. When you say "open the lid of the main toilet outlet", I assume that you are referring to unscrewing the threaded inspection cap at the outside pipe's 90 degree bend. When you say that you "can see the toilet water flowing down slowly after flushing", is the bowl still draining. I am also assuming that the outside vertical pipe is not full. That corrects.. thats why i assumed that the blockage is in the toilet and not "down stream" in the main water outlet. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 10Jan 14, 2014 8:00 am Well i managed to fix the blockage! The combination of another plung as well as using an auger and a hose pipe seemed to do the trick. Just for good measures i put in some caustic soda Thanks for the help guys! Out of interest, what do you guys use to maintain your toilet and drain pipes and prevent future build ups? I heard dishwasher liquid in the toilets and caustic soda down the sink drains is good every few weeks? Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 11Jan 14, 2014 9:30 am You will find most people dont do anything. However following some issues I had with a new toilet at the start of the sewerage line I had to look into different methods to get rid of a problematic musky odour that came about because I was using tank water ( am guessing because there is no chlorine). I found that cleaning with strong chemicals including bleach etc where only temporary fixes. I discovered a product used to balance septic tanks were good and cleaning the toilet and pipes and clearling odours. But better still they worked by providing good bacteria to the system. A bit like Yakut for your toilet. The good Bactria can eat away at waste and kills any smells. I also noticed that it was very good at cleaning toilets and sinks. However there are two issues. 1. Cost $35 a bottle 2. Cannot use any chemicals after using this product otherwise the good bacteria gets killed off and your back to square one. I bottle is designed to treat a whole septic system. So given I don’t have septic system I plan to buy a bottle yearly and just use a cap full in each of the wastes pipes. Including sinks and showers and even toilet cisterns. My aim is over time I don’t have the soap build up in the s bends that most people get over the years. But this hasn’t been proven yet as I haven’t checked. I Forgot the name of the product but it is available from masters. You will find it in the water tank accessories section. It is a clear bottle with a blue liquid inside and cost about $36 Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 12Jan 14, 2014 1:28 pm A lot of blockages are caused by a cistern's small flush capacity, particularly the toilets that have had small capacity cistern retro fitted to an old pan. Have a look in the cistern and see whether there is any extra capacity available if you raise the float level. B STAR I had to look into different methods to get rid of a problematic musky odour that came about because I was using tank water ( am guessing because there is no chlorine). If the rainwater harvesting system has been competently designed and installed, the water will be pristine. Over 90% are not. 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 13Jan 14, 2014 1:48 pm SaveH2O A lot of blockages are caused by a cistern's small flush capacity, particularly the toilets that have had small capacity cistern retro fitted to an old pan. Have a look in the cistern and see whether there is any extra capacity available if you raise the float level. B STAR I had to look into different methods to get rid of a problematic musky odour that came about because I was using tank water ( am guessing because there is no chlorine). If the rainwater harvesting system has been competently designed and installed, the water will be pristine. Over 90% are not. I would have to say that my system is one of the best I have seen in a residential enviroment. I think the issue was at the begining when it was all new, and at that time the propblem toilet wasnt being used enough. Not perfect but still pretty good for the suburbs. I have 2 X 10K litre tanks connected to 4 PVC downpipes (100mm below ground) and covering 200 square meters of roof. I have strainers (Leaf guards or wahter ever they are called) Another strainer in the entry of the tank. I also have "Y" strainer before the pump. Tanks are installed on 100mm pad with dropped edge beams. There are still some improvement I would like to make, but it has been very good once I sorted everything out, and I dont want to go overboard. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 14Jan 14, 2014 2:57 pm The problem will be the wet system. Water retained in a standard wet system cannot breathe plus there will be insufficient velocity generated unless there is very heavy rain to flush the bed load up the vertical riser. If the wet system doesn't have a smaller pipe branched off the base of the riser and connected to a low tank valve to provide a low restriction flow path into the tank so that the wet system is constantly flushed and the pipes only retain clean water, the system is sub standard. Having the additional low restriction flow path also means that the wet system retained water is the same level as the water in the tank and not the water at the top of the vertical riser. This exposes less pipework full of water to the elements. Wet system pipes diverting a concentrated flow from a height above the tank's top meshed inlet also cause significant sediment re-suspension and turbidity when the tank's water level is low. Combine this with the huge number of tanks that have the valve that supplies the pump fitted very low on the bottom of the tank so it draws the worst water from the anaerobic zone, the pump ends up pumping tainted water. Another thing to do to substantially improve the water quality is to fit a simple DIY sediment trap to the underground pipe. Tanks need ventilation as water needs to breathe. If you have a hard cover over the top inlet, get rid of it. From your description, your set up is much better than most but a little time and little money spent would substantially improve it. 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 15Jan 14, 2014 6:45 pm Firstly I would like to say 'WOW'. I like what your saying and how your saying it. But I am having trouble picturing it in my mind. Do you have a diagram that I could refer to, or maybe links to some of the products you make mention of. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 16Jan 14, 2014 9:09 pm The low restriction inlet is easy to make. If you are plumbing to the tank with 100 mm PVC DWV pipe, you just use a tee fitting at the base of the vertical riser rather than an elbow. You can then fit either a DWV pipe reducer (available as a 100 x 50 mm or a 100 x 40 mm) or a 100 x 50 DWV invert taper to the spare outlet. A short and smaller DWV pipe is then fitted and this can be further reduced to 32 or 25 mm. There are several ways to connect the smaller DWV pipe to a 25 or 32 mm tank inlet. The best way is to fit a DWV female iron connector (it's not iron!) to the pipe and then screw a poly director into the connector. The (threaded x barbed) poly director then fits to the Pondflex and the other end screws to the tank valve with a poly nut and tail. You cannot screw two poly directors to female threads at both ends. You can use two directors if you glue the DWV iron coupling last but using a removable poly nut and tail on the valve is best. M x M poly nipples and M x F elbows also come in handy sometimes. You don't always need to use elbows when using Pondflex. The smaller pipe will flow with higher velocity and the lower head in the tank will literally suck the water (and bed load) into the tank. Some people think that the weight of the water in the tank will restrict water flowing through a low valve but they are wrong. It is all about pressure, not weight. A metre of water exerts 9.8 kPa, not the weight of water that the 1 metre of water might weigh. The water is pulled into the tank by the tank's lower hydraulic head and pushed by the greater head in the downpipe. The DIY sediment trap is fitted into a non turbulent section of horizontal wet system pipe. We use a DWV 45 degree junction, often with an inspection opening at the top (the 45 degree branch will be on the bottom. The same method as previously explained is used to reduce the pipe size. Smaller pipes and fittings are a lot cheaper but they also have higher velocity flushing advantages. If any sediment gets to the tank, it will be like a fine talcum powder. The link below shows a DIY sediment trap but you will have to delete the collection chamber in your mind. This is discussed in the thread. viewtopic.php?p=940323#p940323 The trap greatly improves a wet system's water quality because a vertical riser creates several problems but we always use an additional low inlet and a sediment trap as the icing on the cake. Both are inexpensive to do. A lot of plumbers also fit first flush diverters to vertical risers. This means that when it rains, the diverter fills with the water left in the riser but the first flush is at the other end of the wet system still in the downpipe!!! Absolutely no basic knowledge about rainwater harvesting whatsoever. Most haven't a clue. Check out this recent thread re plumbers. viewtopic.php?f=35&t=68234 This link takes you to some examples. Look at the blue tank's first flush diverter. http://www.tankworks.com.au/Create-a-Tank.aspx And another useless first flush diverter shown directly above "see our gallery". http://www.tankworks.com.au/Our-Product ... Tanks.aspx 3in1 Supadiverta. Rainwater Harvesting Best Practice using syphonic drainage. Cleaner Neater Smarter Cheaper Supa Gutter Pumper. A low cost syphonic eaves gutter overflow solution. Re: Clogged toilet - suggestions needed 17Jan 15, 2014 10:58 am SaveH20 - thanks for the details summary. I will need to go through it properly when I have some quiet time. But having a quick read has already got me thinking a little differently. Hopefully I will be able to impliment some of this asap. Thanks Again. Looking at some of the designs on websites, they are all selling very similar products. I get that you want something stylish. It's worth looking for search terms like SaveH2O… 2 7007 Hey, I am wanting to add a second toilet to my house, bit we have limited room. There is a hallway/entry that is never used, so was thinking this could be an option. Only… 0 4709 "Losers" "humanity" "off time" "your" "top notch" "love symbol" Sounds like ponzo is done using other people's toilets 36 23899 |