Blockage In The Vent Stacks
The vent stack is the pipe that goes up the roof from the drainage system.
Its primary purpose is to emit air and sewer gases from the toilet plus equalize the air pressure.
When you have a blocked vent stack, this will also cause negative pressure leading to the same gurgling sounds.
These plumbing vents can be blocked by animals building their nest there, debris, and leaves, to name a few.
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What To Do To Solve A Gurgling Toilet
To alleviate the issue, remove any physical blockages in the drain. Depending on the blockage, some homeowners can use an enzyme-based cleaner to disintegrate any items further down the pipe. Remember that caustic chemicals can damage your pipes. You can try a plunger. If plunging does not fix the problem, then traveling up to the roof and removing any accumulated debris will stop any vacuum issues. This allows for air dispersion to go uninterrupted.
This is not a DIY project.
However, the best method to deal with an issue like this is to call a professional plumber. They will understand why this is happening and find the best solution for the issue. Sometimes this problem is caused by the improper ventilation of your plumbing system. Regardless, homeowners who conduct DIY plumbing repairs usually end up paying far more than necessary to repair the initial problem. For example, it is not uncommon for homeowners to try to figure out how to fix a toilet leak and before they know it, they have a broken toilet, water damage, and much more to contend with.
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How Does A Blocked Drainpipe/vent Cause A Gurgling Toilet
A vent stack is the vertical pipe which runs from the main house drainpipe through the roof of your house. It has 2 main functions.
- It provides a way for sewer gases to exit the drainpipe. If the vent stack is clogged, you may also experience a sewer gas smell in your house, as the gases will be forced out of the drains.
- It introduces air into the drainpipe.
In order for your fixtures to drain fast enough, there needs to be air in the drainpipe. It is the same thing as when you want to drain water out of your water heater.
You would need to open one hot water faucet to introduce air into the tank and hence faster and smooth draining.
But why cant air just enter the drainpipe through other drains like the sink drain? Well, if you look underneath your sink, you will notice that a part of the pipe is bent to look like a U.
That is by design and not accident. Every fixture in your house has that bend. You will also notice your toilet has it, and that is why it is able to hold water at the bottom of the bowl.
The U-bend is known as a P-trap. It is always full of water. The water acts as a barrier which prevents sewer gases from coming out through the drain, but instead exit through the vent stack.
When the have a clogged vent stack and you drain your shower, air will be trapped in the drainpipe creating what is known as negative air pressure. The air will force its way out through the toilet or sink drain and hence the bubbling.
How To Avoid Future Toilet Blockages
You may need to have a conversation with your household members on how to avoid future blockages.
Cigarette butts, paper towels, cigarette butts, and used sanitary towels shouldnt be flushed down the toilet.
While its okay to flush some wipes, other flushable wipes can clog up your toilet system and end up creating what is called a fatberg.
The clog will certainly form when you wash things that wont promptly disintegrate. To avoid all this, dont flush anything that wont quickly break down in the water.
Note: Flushable wipes are not degradable they block sewers because they can't decompose.
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Low Water Levels In Your Toilet Tank
The first thing you want to check when searching for the cause of slow drainage is the toilet tank. Remove the toilet tank lid and put it in a safe place. Then check your tanks fill level.
If the tank water looks lower than usual, then the issue is probably your toilet tank. When your toilet has a low water power it does not have much force behind its flush.
Thus, it leads to a slow flushing toilet. There can be a variety of reasons for low water levels in your tank. Most of the time its due to reasons beyond your control.
Maintenance can help, but toilet parts and systems will break down over time.
We often narrow it down to things like a broken fill tube, cracked tank or damaged fill valve but it can come from any number of things. Check out these ten reasons why your house may have low water pressure.
Clean Your Roof Vent Stack
If your roof vent stack doesnt have a screen, debris can fall inside and prevent air from escaping. This step involves getting up on your roof with a garden hose. If you dont feel comfortable doing this, call a professional plumbing company.
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Unclog The Plumbing Vent
You can easily unclog a plumbing vent if you can manage to climb to the roof of the house. You will need a ladder, a garden hose and sometimes a drain snake.
Here is how to unclog a plumbing vent:
- Climb to the roof of your house armed with a garden hose.
- Check if there are blockages at the top of the vent stack which you can easily remove with your hand.
- Stick the garden hose inside the vent stack and use it to probe and hopefully dislodge whatever that is clogging it.
- Have someone on the ground turn on water to the hose. The weight of the water maybe enough to clear the clog. If it is snowing, dump boiling water inside the vent. Snow is known to clog vents.
- If the clog wonât just budge, you can upgrade to a plumbing snake. Not toilet auger.
- Push the snake inside the vent pipe until you encounter the clog resistance.
- Turn the handle until you move past the resistance then go deeper to make sure there is no another clog.
- Have someone again flush the toilet and confirm that the gurgling has stopped.
Taking Care Of Your Homes Plumbing
If its not the municipality or water companys problem to fix, its yours to get those lines unblocked.
Need plumbing service? Dont wait until your home is turned into a sewer swamp due to blocked plumbing.
Instead, contact Phyxter Home Services when you need a professional to restore your homes plumbing.
Check out our page on our Plumbing Services to see if we service your area. We will make sure the job is done right the first time!
Our professional plumbers in your area are trained and experienced in all plumbing issues.
So if you hear that toilet gurgling or see toilet bubbles, call us today.
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Toilet Gurgling Or Bubbling Heres What To Do
If you have recently started noticing that your toilet is making a gurgling sound, followed by a type of bubbling after-effect when you flush, you are not alone. Toilet gurgles are pretty common. There are ways to resolve a toilet gurgling problem.
Toilet gurgles or bubbles occur when theres a blockage in your drain pipes, causing negative air pressure or suction in the drain line. Blockages often occur when flushing baby wipes down the drain pipe. More severe cases can be caused by tree roots clogging the main sewer line. Escaping air could back up your toilet with waste, ultimately forcing you to address the problem and find the blockage.
Replace A Cracked Toilet Bowl
This problem is not as common as a damaged fill tube, but it can happen. Sometimes a crack can occur within the lower bowl of the toilet. This leak will cause water to gradually drip out.
You can identify it by puddles around the base of the toilet. The water in the toilet will also be noticeably replenished. Unfortunately, there is no simple fix for a cracked toilet bowl.
Any sealing agents you apply will likely be temporary at best. You will likely need to replace the whole toilet and install a new one. If you dont feel comfortable installing a new toilet, then call your local plumber.
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Common Causes Why Your Toilet Gurgles
Okay, we know now that a gurgling or bubbling toilet is probably due to a blockage somewhere. Let us examine the areas of your toilets system that a blockage may impact.
Its easy to spot a severely clogged toilet. The toilet could experience a slow drain or prevent the toilet from flushing altogether in a clogged toilet. After flushing your toilet, the water may rise instead of falling, and this could be due to the following reasons:
- Flushing down the wrong items: for example, paper towels, baby wipes, and other hygienic products.
- Flushing small items: kids often flush small toys or other things down the toilet, restricting the toilet from flushing.
- An inadequate plumbing vent: the plumbing system needs enough air to help move water through the drain pipes.
How To Unclog A Slow Draining Toilet
When we flush the toilet, and it doesnt seem to drain, were stuck in a situation that none of us want to be in. How to unclog a slow draining toilet is not an easy task and can take hours or days for someone who isnt trained to do so correctly. But there are some things you can try before calling a plumber.
In this article, we will learn different methods of unclogging a slow draining toilet.
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Solution: Fixing A Clogged Vent
We recommend a professional plumber to fix this issue, but if you want to do it yourself, here is what you need to do.
Typically, your drainage vents will come through the roof of your house so in order to clear them, you will need to rent the proper cable machine and then clear the vent from the top of your house.
This can be dangerous working on your roof which is why we highly recommend having a professional handle the situation.
Issues That Would Make Your Toilet Drain Slowly
Arguably the most common issue with a slow draining toilet is a clog. Not necessarily a full blown clog, but a partial one.
Many things can cause a partial clog, but luckily it can be a pretty easy fix.
Assuming there will not be an excessive amount of water that will overflow the toilet bowl, try increasing the water pressure.
You can do this by filling a large bucket of with water and quickly empty the bucket into the toilet bowl, ensuring there is as little splashing as possible.
If the issue is in fact a small clog, this should be able to push whatever is clogging the pipe through and finish the initial flush.
Perhaps you have had to deal with unclogging another drain in your house and have what many people call a snake or an auger.
This will help to physically push the clogged materials through the drain. If you do not already have one, it may be a good idea to buy one for times like this!
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Why Is My Toilet Gurgling
A: Id bet that one of your plumbing vents is blocked. Most people think that those small pipes that stick out of a roof are there to exhaust sewage smells, and thats true.
But they also equalize the air pressure in the drain pipes so waste water can flow freely. You can see how the principle works by sticking one end of a straw into a glass of water and then covering the other end with your finger.
As long as you keep your finger in place, you can remove the straw, and water inside wont drain out. But when you remove your finger, the straw drains immediately.
The giant finger blocking your roof vent could be ice or snow or debris or even an animal carcass.
The result? Whenever a lot of water goes down the drain, it sucks the water out of your toilet and maybe out of the traps under your sinks. The blockage probably makes your tub drain pretty slowly, too.
A plumber can remove an obstruction by running a snake from the roof down your vent system, but to keep it from happening again, you have to figure out whats causing it.
If its ice, you can replace the top section of pipe with a bigger one, up to 4 inches in diameter. Or you can insulate the pipe below the roof, or even heat it with electrical cables, but thats usually not necessary except in arctic climates.
If snow buildup is causing the blockage, add an extension so the vent pipe clears the snow pack. And if animals are to blame, cover the end of the pipe with hardware cloth held in place with a hose clamp.
Time For The Sewer Snake
Serious plumbing issues may call for serious equipment. One of the most commonly used tools by professional plumbers is the sewer snake, or drain auger.
Made to snake its way down to deal with the problem directly, this thin, flexible tool ends in some form of cutting tool that can reach tough blockages deep in your pipes. Plumbers use this tool to auger their way through blockages, breaking up solids and allowing them to continue through the system.
Manual snakes can be purchased at most home supply stores and are simple to use. Mechanical versions are available as well. However, these are more expensive and complicated to use, and the cost is similar to calling a plumber.
Along with a high-quality plunger, a manual sewer snake is an item that should be in every homeowner and renters house. These affordable tools can quickly resolve unexpected bathroom issues.
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What Causes The Black Dirt Coming Out Of Shower Drain
A gurgling toilet can be annoying. But compared to this next common question, it may be a welcome one. Instead of a pesky sound, in this case, youre in the shower or using your bathroom sink. Suddenly, you notice a black sludge rising out the drain. You might also notice a stinky smell along with it.
What causes black dirt coming out of shower drain or sink drain? This issue might seem much grosser than a gurgling drain. But in fact, the causes of both that black sludge and a gurgling tub drain may be related.
Usually, when black stuff makes its way back up a drain, its because buildup has occurred in that drain. In your shower or sink, this is often a combination of hair, soap scum, and natural oils. This sludge has become stuck in your drain and is causing a blockage. As water tries to make its way down your drains, this sludge gets pushed back up your drains, and into your shower, tub, or sink.
While gross and sometimes smelly, this black sludge isnt dangerous. But it is a problem youll want to get fixed. You can use baking soda and vinegar as a quick fix to get rid of the stink and temporarily make the black sludge disappear while you finish showering. This wont fix the problem long term though.
That black dirt coming out of shower drain is more often a symptom of a larger clogging issue. So use that quick fix, then call your favorite Las Vegas plumber to get your pipes properly cleaned!
What Not To Flush
A quick note about clogs: You can avoid them by not flushing anything that wont immediately disintegrate. This includes paper towels, tissues, feminine products, cigarette butts, and even wipes that say flushable.
For the record, all that means is they wont come back up when you flush. It doesnt mean the items wont cause a problem down the line literally.
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Exterior Sewer Line Blockage
A gurgling toilet typically indicates a problem with the interior plumbing of the home, but this isn’t the only location where a blockage could create issues. The exterior sewer line of the home may also be responsible for the gurgling sound. This could be caused by the drainpipe collapsing, dirt entering the line and creating a clog, or even nearby tree roots rupturing the drain line.
You can attempt to solve this problem on your own with a motorized drain snake to try to clear out the drain line. Insert the drain snake into the drain line from the main sewer clean out, instead of entering through the toilet drain. Just keep in mind that even if the drain snake reaches the clog, you may not be able to break through depending on the nature of the clog. If you suspect the issue is a blocked exterior sewer line, it’s recommended to hire a professional plumber to resolve this problem.