Be careful with the hot water. A friend cracked his toilet that way.
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Australian here.
Step 1: design your damn toilets so they do not clog.
Step 2: there is no step 2.
Seriously, half a century of toilet use here in Aus and I've never caused - or discovered even - a blocked toilet at home.
Clearly the fact that I can buy a toilet plunger from the local hardware store indicates that this can happen here. But it seems that every American household has a toilet plunger and poop knife on standby and many articles are devoted to what clogs, and how to unclog, American toilets.
There are better designs for both toilets and plumbing out there guys, maybe you should look into using them.
Maybe it's American diets and not the plumbing.
Dude we put a pack of (not) flushable wipes and a dozen tampons down the drain, and all our shops have free public toilets
Good luck..
sh itjust works
You've got it all wrong. We've got the exact same toilets! They just struggle with the compressed remains of my three brunch big macs....
You don't, American toilets are weird and siphon the bowl out before filling it with water. The better design dumps water into the bowl from the cistern and flushes everything through.
How many courics?
I completely agree that the us should design their plumbing better, but we do typically throw more flushable golfballs down the toilet than you.
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Note to Australians. Your sewerage pipes are double the width of the USA's weak, inferior pipes. You may never need a plunger in your entire life.
Also, wet wipes are NOT flushable ANYWHERE, and if we didn't live in fake democracies ruled by corporations any company that labelled them as such would have been sued into bankruptcy decades ago.
That expains it. Never owned one, never needed one.
Thanks!
I've never had a problem starting on step 4 and repeating a few times.
Hol up... You're supposed to heat the plunger up first? I can only assume it's to loosen up the rubber so it compresses better, but I've never felt like it was too stiff to not work.
This was the part that I wouldn't do just because I view the sink as mostly clean and plunger as mostly dirty. So unless I were to sterilize the sink afterwards I wouldn't put a plunger in the sink.
Yeah seriously that's gross as fuck. I wouldn't even want to use a garage sink to rinse a plunger. It's just too nasty for me. It gets rinsed outside with the hose.
It's to reduce the chance of it cracking as rubber gets brittle at lower temps; especially a shit batch of cheap dollar-store rubber. If it cracks it's useless.
What about the poop knife?
DO NOT use hot water to help unlog a toilet. I've had the porcelain crack from the heat, had to replace the toilet entirely. Lesson learned.
Doesn't "hot water" refer to what you can get out of the faucet, so like 60 °C (140 °F), not boiling water?
My kid flushed a rubber ball down the toilet before - it was exactly the right size and squishyness to get stuck. After trying many things, I was able to get it out by removing the toilet and pouring in boiling water - it softened the ball enough for it to be flushed out.
It sounds like I got lucky. It was a warm day iirc - maybe that helped with the thermal stress.
Similar issue, my wife knocked the kids rubber ducky into the toilet well flushing it. A complicated maneuver because she hit it with her elbow knocking the ducky off the top of the tank exactly as she hit flush. Had to auger it to the bottom of the toilet and than unbolt it from the floor and yank it out from the bottom hole because it wouldn't go past the lip where the toilet met the drain. Honestly probably better it didn't go into the pipes and get jammed somewhere else I suppose.
Guess I did all the way up to step 7?
And, yes I remind her of this folly regularly.
There is always the possibility the clog isn't in the toilet itself but further down the drain. You can test this by running faucets and seeing if the sinks drain properly
A cheap method to unblock anything:
- Remove any loose material.
- Now pour 30 gallons of jet fuel in the area.
- Ignite it but stand back at least a few feet.
Yikes. What are you flushing down your toilet that you need a auger to unclog it?
Non flushable wipes, tampons, cigarettes, and paper towels
If it's the average western diet, it's probably from the massive amount of toilet paper that was used to clean the asshole after their failure to use a bidet.
This is for Americans. Many of them are dumb enough to flush wet wipes.
Canadian here, recently had to get the toilet auger out because no one else in my house seems to understand you can’t flush wipes, no matter how much I tell them
European here, I just had a particularly nasty shit this afternoon. The auger was my hero.
They are unclogging it next time then surely
You know what, you’re god damn right they are
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I know someone whose constipation leads to far too solid of logs that get stuck in the bends if they don't use a large amount of fiber supplements (no matter what they eat).
Literally all i have to do is use the toilet brush and freneticly plunge it. Works every time.
I can smell this post
Step 1 sounds funny to me. I would think it's turn the water off, not remove top tank.
Top of the tank, as in the lid, so you can close the flapper and prevent the bowl from overflowing.
Why wouldn’t it close normally like it always does? There’s no issue with the reservoir here.
If the toilet is actively flushing, water will continue to drain from the tank to the bowl. Closing the flapper stops any additional water from going into the bowl.
Personally, I prefer to make sure the tank only fills enough to fill the bowl, so as long as you don't double flush, you don't need to panic and throw the lid off the tank.
Hmm, that's maybe also why American toilets get clogged all the time if they release the water so slowly? Mine empties the entire tank and stops filling the bowl after like a second or two, regardless if it got blocked or not. I can't even reach any kind of "stopper" in the tank without opening the entire thing
Because this guide is for american toilets.
Those are the only toilets I’m familiar with, at least with regards to maintenance and troubleshooting.
I’ve cleared a lot of clogged shitters, not once have I had to ensure the flapper is down in the reservoir. That’s “why won’t it stop running” not “why won’t I the water go down”.
Once the flapper lifts, it won't close again until the tank empties completely. If the toilet clogs and you try too many times to flush it down instead of breaking out the plunger right away; sometimes the water can't overflow out of the bowl fast enough to let the tank drain fully, so it just endlessly flows. Doesn't happen to all toilets, but it's still good to know when your toilet full of turds just won't stop dumping water on the floor.
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How does the hot water and soap help?
I'm guessing it's to break down the fat / grease in the poop.
The hot water will speed up the reaction, with the added benefit of possibly expanding the pipe just enough to make a difference.
Just a guess, though!
It won’t taste as bad when it splashes back into your mouth.
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