Hi I am Meriel

My husband and I have just installed a new toilet. We are remodeling our bathroom and we are having a problem with our new toilet! It does not want to flush it takes two or three flushes to empty the bowl and it gets a big air bubble. We are not new to remodeling but this problem we have never encountered. Help, we have called the manufacture and they seam to think its air in the sewer line, but the old toilet works fine. Is it possible we just got a bad toilet?

A bubble indicates a partial blockage downstream of the toilet. What happens is when you flush the discharge hits the partial clog and bounces back sending a bubble of sewer gas ahead of it. Did you co0ver the closet bend opebing when you had it apart? Could something have dropped down the pipe during the remodel? Also, something else to consider. In my capacity as shop trouble shooter I began to run into a slew of complaints on our new construction that were just like yours. I knew they all couldn't be " bad toilets" so I went looking for the cause. I found that when installing the new bowl that the wax ring had been forced out into the discharge pipe and blocking the free flow of water. When the water hit it a backpressure was set up preventing the siphon that makes a good flush and the solids just swirled around while the water went slowly down. I had to set up meeting with our plumbers and show them the problem and how to fix it. When you set the bowl, put the wax seal down on the flat side to the closet flange. Then take your hands and bevel the wax seal outward so that when you set a bowl on it the wax is forced out instead of in blocking the flush. The customer complaints stopped and I had less work to do. Try molding the wax seal so it doesn't choke down on the flush. Good luck, Tom