How to unblock a toilet
Today I learned how to unblock a toilet. A blocked toilet is an especially troublesome problem, since the only way you know the toilet is blocked is when you flush it, and you see that which you’ve just unloaded rising up to meet you, at an alarming pace.
Fortunately, it didn’t overflow.
Being the handy guy that I am, I went to the hardware store, and bought myself a plunger, and L of sulphuric acid. I tossed the entire litre of acid down the shower drain (connected to the toilet), and was delighted to hear hissing noises, bubbling, and a little smoke.
“Excellent”, I thought. “It should be finished in a few minutes”.
Skip to 2 hours later.
The bathroom smelt like sulphur, the shower was full of muck (since I’d turned on the basin to test my understanding of “bathroom physics”), and the toilet was still smelly and full to the brim.
In desperation, I carefully wrapped the toilet brush in a plastic cloth, and gingerly attempted to “prod” at the base of the bowl. All I accomplished was stirring up a brownish toilet-paper soup.
Defeated, I called the building plumber. Now he was a tough guy. He strode in, took one look at my pathetic plastic plunger lying unused in the shower, and asked me “Have you used the plunger?”
“Yes”. (duh)
“Have you used it on the toilet?”
“Uuhh, no. I’ve used the toilet brush though?”
Without further ado, he grabbed the plunger, stuck it into the bowl, gave it about ten hard yanks, and with a delightfully disgusting gurgling noise, the bowl emptied. He washed the plunger off, kept the toilet flushing for about 30 seconds (it continues to flush as long as you hold the handle down - hence the danger of brimming), and said “that’s it”.
I’m very grateful. Next time, I’ll do it - he made it look easy 
(It took two towels to mop up the mess on the floor - clean water fortunately!)
July 12th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Fantastic
I was lucky enough for there to be a slight bit of seepage so the water went down when left for about 10 mins. Then all you do is get the toilet brush, hit the flush button and push pull like crazy untill you hear the Whooosh of what ever just left your bowels leave you forever, also my first time… heh
July 16th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
the toilet at work is prone to this, i find just using the plain old toilet brush as a plunger works ok enough to get it to drain, even when full.
i think the volume of the cistern is close to the volume of the bowl so that it doesn’t overflow on first flush….
tehee, Craig from Dunedin