I went to use our toilet the other day, and was surprised to find that it was blocked. There are few things that are worse than a blocked toilet, that’s a fact, especially if weren’t the one who caused the blockage!
When I say “blocked”, I mean nothing was shifting, despite a number of attempts to unblock it using a plunger. No matter what I tried, the toilet just remained totally blocked.
Frustrated, and with no other options, I had to dismantle the entire fixture, which was no small feat for a non-plumber like me.
Jammed inside the drain I found a purple rubber dinosaur, which belonged to my five-year-old son.
I painstakingly got all the toilet parts together again, the tank filled, and I flushed it. However, to my surprise it didn’t work much better than before!
As I pondered what to do next, my son walked into the bathroom.
I pointed to the purple dinosaur I had just dislodged and told him that the toilet still wasn’t working.
“Did you get the green one, too?” he asked.
Oh joy, you have to love kids don’t you!
Don’t disappear yet though, we have some more funny blocked toilet stories for you if you keep reading…
On more than one occasion when my son was small, he would do these enormous poos and block the toilet. Often we wouldn’t tell anyone, but you would walk into the bathroom, lift the lid, and there was Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, head poking out above the water, waiting to greet you.
Well you just had to laugh, seeing something like that and in some bizarre way I was proud of my son, probably for making me laugh if nothing else.
However, despite having seen this advice on the internet, DO NOT pour hot water into the toilet to remove a clog like that. While it may be fine for general clogs and help to clear the blockage, if you have “Nessie” swimming in the bowl, all you are going to do is end up baking the creature, resulting in it becoming more solid and even harder to dislodge.
Now when this happens, a toilet brush or toilet plunger aren’t going to do you much good. There is only one thing for it and that’s to beat the offending creature into submission, meaning you have to stick your arm in the toilet bowl and break the monster up by hand, which is horribly unpleasant. I haven’t even mentioned the smell yet, which was terrible and if you pour boiling water on Nessie it’s just going to get worse, trust me!
The best solution is to pour a small amount of washing up liquid or other liquid soap into the bowl, so it lubricates around the blockage and it will eventually go. Flush every now and again, which will probably cause the bowl to fill up to a precarious level, then wait for the waters to recede and try again.
Of course, if you use too much soap, well I never have, but I have a mental picture of a foaming monster oozing out onto the bathroom floor, so trust me, don’t overdo it on the soap.
If the bowl is full and the water just isn’t going down at all, even after half an hour or so, you might just have to resort to breaking it up or pushing it through by hand, but usually a bit of liquid soap and regular flushing does the job. Not a pleasant thought, but it’s got to be done and you can guarantee it’s one job that a woman will always leave for a man to do!
So, do you have any funny stories about blocked toilets to share with us and our readers? We would love to hear them if you do. Please leave us a comment in the form lower down the page. Looking forward to some hilarious blocked toilet stories.
Image used under a Collective Commons License from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toilet-llqq-001.jpg