If there’s one thing in your home you should count on, it’s your toilets. Namely, you should rely on their ability to flush away what you need to, keeping your bathrooms sanitary and preventing unwanted odors.
But sometimes toilets can flush very slowly, so slowly that unsightly buildup can from in the bowl or on the rim of the toilet. Slow-flushing toilets can also cause bathroom odor.
If you want to improve your toilets’ ability to flush away wastewater quickly and without delay, read these four causes of slow flushing. Then, you can learn how to treat each of the causes of a slow-flushing toilet.
Water Tank Settings
Check your toilet’s water tank. In nearly all American home toilets, the water tank has a top lid and is situated directly above the toilet seat. The water inside your toilets should be about half an inch from the top of the overflow tube. If the water setting is too low, then your tank isn’t supplying enough water to the bowl when you flush the toilet.
Raise the float arm to increase the amount of water in the tank, all of which will deposit into the toilet bowl when you flush. This could increase flush times.
Mild Clogs
A fully clogged toilet won’t flush at all, or will trickle down very slowly over time until you plunge the toilet or hire a plumber to snake the drain. Mild clogs, meanwhile, can interrupt the toilet’s ability to quickly flush away wastewater. Mild buildup in the sewage line or directly past the toilet’s J-shaped trap pipe can restrict water flow. If you’ve flushed any foreign objects down the toilet or are guilty of overfilling the toilet bowl, you may have contributed to such a clog.
A plumber can find and remove any buildup or blockage in your pipes so that water can freely transmit down the sewer line and into the municipal sewer below street level.
Hard Water
Hard water is water that contains certain minerals, including calcium and magnesium carbonates. While these minerals are naturally occurring and not harmful to your health, they can damage your toilet and its related pipes. The minerals in hard water, formed as water flows over limestone and chalk underground, aren’t as free-flowing as water is, and may stay behind after water flows down your drains.
If your home has a hard water supply, then mineral buildup may slowly start to line your pipes, slowly decreasing their internal diameter and slowing the flow of water. A plumber can determine if hard water is affecting your toilet and its pipes. They can then remove calcium, magnesium, and other unwanted minerals, and can even install a water softener to prevent a recurrence of this problem.
Improper Ventilation
This is a complex problem, and tricky one to fix. If your home’s toilets have poor ventilation, then they aren’t properly pressurized. A precise system of pressure physics is responsible for your toilet flushing, sucking away the contents of the bowl along with it and dispensing them down your sewer line with a low risk of backing up into the bowl again. If your toilet makes unusual sounds when you flush, like gurgling, then there isn’t enough air in your plumbing waste lines for water to flow freely through them.
Call a plumbing expert like The Pink Plumber to investigate your plumbing’s ventilation quality, and to resolve all possible causes of slow toilets.
