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Plumbing Emergency: What To Do During a Flood

Welcome! My name is Sally. This is my blog about plumbing. I decided to start writing about plumbing after a very scary experience. I arrived home from work one day only to discover that a pipe burst in my home. When I opened the front door, I saw a torrent of water pouring down the stairs. I panicked and ran next door to my neighbour. Luckily, he used to work as a construction contractor, so he has a lot of experience in dealing with household problems. He helped me to turn off the mains water and helped me to mop up the mess. After this event, I decided I wanted to learn more about the plumbing in my house, so I went to a night school class.

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Plumbing Emergency: What To Do During a Flood

Is Toilet Paper Blocking Your Toilet Drain?

by Melvin Owens

If your toilet has trouble flushing and you think there's a blockage in the system, you'll try to work out what the problem might be. You haven't done anything to your plumbing, and nobody in the house has thrown anything odd down the pan, but it is obviously blocked by something.

After you wrack your brains for a while, you realise that the only thing that you've changed when you use the toilet is your toilet paper. Could your new brand of paper be blocking your toilet drain? How can you fix the problem?

Is Your Toilet Paper Blocking Your Toilet?

Toilet paper is supposed to flush down the toilet easily. This kind of paper breaks down quickly in water—it basically shreds itself into small pieces when it gets wet.

So, when you flush, the toilet paper should go through the system and down its drain. It starts off in sheets but quickly breaks down. Even if you use a large amount of paper, the toilet shouldn't block because the paper doesn't hold together when it's wet. However, it's not uncommon for certain types of toilet paper to block toilet drains rather than flush away. This most often happens with premium products.

Luxury toilet paper is often thicker than regular paper, is quilted, and is 2- or 3-ply. This paper takes longer to break down in your plumbing and, if there is enough of it in your toilet's drainage system, it can clump up and cause a blockage.

How to Get Rid of the Toilet Paper Blockage

Leaving the toilet for a couple of hours may fix a small blockage. This gives the paper time to break up. If this doesn't work, then you can try to shift the paper yourself.

This works best if you can still see some of the toilet paper in the pan. Put on a pair of rubber gloves and try to grab the end of the paper. As you pull it out, the clump will either all come out or it will start to break up. In either case, you may be able to shift the blockage.

If you can't see the paper in the pan at all, then it may be stuck further down the system in the toilet's pipes or drain. If you don't have any plumber's tools you can use to try to unblock the toilet, like a toilet plunger, then call for a plumber. They can clear the blockage and check that there is nothing wrong with your system. If your toilet did block because you're using a luxury toilet paper, then switching back to your old brand in the future might be a good idea.

Talk to a plumber today for more information about blocked drain repair.

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