The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.
All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:
**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated.
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!
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!
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.
sh itjust works
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..
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.
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.
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.
Real men just reach in there and pull the blockage out.
I thought the first image in the thumbnail was flicking the turd!
Is that like flicking the bean?
Only rectally
Ew, no.
You do one then the other
Or use a straw...
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.
Be careful with the hot water. A friend cracked his toilet that way.
I've never had a problem starting on step 4 and repeating a few times.
Yikes. What are you flushing down your toilet that you need a auger to unclog it?
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
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).
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.
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.
In the case of my toilet: the chain that is used to lift it when flushing gets tangled, so it can't close on its own until you detangle it.
I get that. That’s a totally different scenario than “clogged toilet”.
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:
I would not brush my teeth on that sink ever.
My plumber told me never to use a plunger in a toilet, and to use a snake instead. The back-and-forth motion from using the plunger can damage the wax seal and cause a leak.
How does the hot water and soap help?
It won’t taste as bad when it splashes back into your mouth.
I've had success with just dish soap - it makes blockages "slide" more easily.
In the last flatshare I lived, I had a particularly annoying combination of a slow toilet and a flatmate incapable of solving any blockages. Whenever I'd see that, I'd go "fuck this", squirt a silly amount of Fairy in the bowl (I'm talking like 100 ml at least) and usually the blockage would resolve itself overnight.
