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Question for you folks, since I am sick of having soaking wet floors:
I have a sewer system house, modem plumbing, nothing out of the ordinary...
Every 30 to 60 seconds the 2 toilets in my house shoot water up through the drain hole. I am assuming this is huge air bubbles, and in most cases will shoot the water a good
10-12" straight in the air. You can imagine the outcome of this while trying to use the plumbing! And yes, it really sucks.
I would appreciate anyone who has seen this, heard of this, or just flat out know what is wrong to get back to me on this. I seem to be totally stumped.
Things to consider:
1) it happens in both toilets.
2) it is so frequent that a minute of silence is golden.
3) there is no way that this could happen for months without running out of air, so air is getting into the drain line somewhere.
I take it that the plumber wasn't curious enough to want to figure this out. Don't think its a drain issue, think its a vent issue in combination with a main sewer line problem. That thing in your yard is a sewer clean out not a vent. The vent is on your roof. By removing the cap on the clean out you are allowing main line gasses to escape there rather than your toilet. Did plumber check vent?
For those of you who bet on Vent clog...you are correct...sort of....
In a nutshell:
When they installed the main line sewers on my street, they vented the sewer lines through the house vents (the vent on the roof)...problem is, I live on a hill on the end of the street. the 10 or so houses (including mine) started experiencing sever methane odors to the point where our yards smelled like an open sewer. The solution: place a charcoal filter ontop of the vents. Well my bag slid down the pipe and caused a clog in the line. I removed the bag of charcoal from the vent, and my toilets have not exploded since.
Insteresting side not of all of this: when I pulled the bag of charcoal out of the vent, the BOTTOM of the bag was soaking wet. I am guessing this means it was vaccuming the water back up the vent pipe.
Charcoal filters on the vents huh?? sounds like the city is trying to save some money by halfassing instead of finding the real problem and fixing it. Please keep us posted when you encounter furhter problems,,,(as im sure you will in the near future(hope not,, but ).. Lee
So everybody has a bag of charcoal on their vent pipe, you live at the top of the hill and all the sewer gas comes up to you. Wonder what genius thought that up. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a vent pipe doesn't it. The wet charcoal would be the result of the moisture coming up with the sewer gas.
Guess I owe you a pizza. Town politicians owe you a lot more. Gawd, politicians can be dumb.
Suggest you ask all you neighbors to change their charcoal, you could threaten them with wet butts like happened to you.
What was (I really wish I could make this s@#$ up) really funny, as I was setting up the ladder to climb 30' into the air to the vent, my first selectman stopped by since we are in an election year. Man I reamed him out.
Anyway...yea, I either have methane in my yard, or exploding toilets....first thing tomorrow I am going to my town hall.
Speedball, if the vent is open no pressure could build in the system and hk agrees the vent could be a problem.
Or am I missing something?
OK, I could see that happening if the pressure cam from the main and every vent in the house was blocked. But if that happened that would not be the cause. THe vents will mot produce pressure, vents produce suction. if all the vents were revented back in the attic and the VTR was blocked that could possibly be it. I'd like to know where the toilets are in relationship to the outside clean out. I like Harolds Idea of removing the cleanout cover to check for outside pressure but the vents aren't the root cause of the potties blowing up. But hey Dan! I've been known to be wrong before.
Just had a brain storm (not a significant event in my small brain).
Tap in to the town main, put a vacuum pump on it and pull that sewer gas out and into a propane tank. Make all you neighbors happy and give you free heating. Wonder what pressure you could have to put on methane gas to liquefy it.
Of course if it worked your town council would probably sue you for stealing their s@#$.
Maybe the Obamarites and the EPA would give us a few million to do a pilot program of capturing methane gas for home heating. After all it would be "green energy". Anybody got any connections with ACORN?
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