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Long-time homeowners in Concord rarely think about their home’s plumbing system, especially when it comes to the toilets. That is, until something goes wrong and the toilet won’t flush, or it keeps running. The truth is, when a toilet malfunctions, it can become more than a minor inconvenience. In fact, a severely blocked toilet can wreak havoc on a household.
The good news is, clearing a blocked toilet is often as simple as grabbing a plunger and, well, plunging away, there are other ways you can unclog a toilet. These would be helpful to know if the plunger doesn’t do the job or you don’t have one handy, so here are a few points to remember.
Use dish soap.
Get some dish soap from the kitchen and pour around half a cup into the toilet, then wait for about an hour before trying to flush. An alternative to dish soap would be to get a bar of hand soap, chop it into small chunks, and throw those into the toilet. Again, wait for an hour; you may have to give it a little more time since you used solid soap rather than liquid.
What you’re trying to do here is to have the soap dissolve the clogs of dirt and whatever else is blocking your toilet. Once enough of the clog has dissolved thanks to the soap, the water should start flowing again, and you’ll be able to flush your toilet as before.
Add hot water.
If soap by itself doesn’t seem to do much, you can try and dislodge the clog by pouring water into the toilet, in addition to the soap you’ve already poured down the drain. Get some hot water and add it to the toilet from waist level, to get some force behind the flow of the water. You don’t want to use boiling water because the toilet could crack from the high temperature.
Use baking soda and vinegar.
If you don’t want to or can’t use dish soap or hand soap for any reason, there’s no need to worry. You can still mix a solution that can help dissolve a toilet clog. Get two cups of vinegar and one cup of baking soda, and pour both down the toilet. Let it sit for around 30 minutes and see if that doesn’t get rid of the clog.
If the clog is still there, add hot water, again from waist height so the force of running water can dislodge the clog.
If you’ve tried all of the above alternatives to plunging the toilet and the clog is still there, it may mean it’s time to pull up the toilet so you can investigate further. This is a major operation, so to speak, so before you do so, make sure you have the proper tools, not to mention you know how to essentially uninstall the toilet without destroying it or your flooring. Otherwise, you’d be better off paying for Concord plumbing services to have a professional pull up the toilet for you and inspect your plumbing to pinpoint the cause of the clog.
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