Help!! My husband and I have been trying to deal with our exploding toilet problem for almost a year now and nobody can seem to give us a straight answer! We live in northern Quebec where the winters can get to be around -40F. Our house is a 2 story with a Mother-in-Law apartment in the basement. The have 3 full baths, one on each floor. The house was built in 1985 but we have only lived here 3 years. I noticed from the time we moved in that whenever I wash clothes (washer\dryer is on the main floor) I would hear a gurgling sound in the basement toilet when the washer drained. It never did anything but gurgle and fill with soapy water but that was it, no bad smells or overflowing. I just thought of it as an harmless character trait of the house and left it at that. Last January my husband went down to the basement to find sewage and toilet paper all flooded all over the bathroom and hallway floors as well as on the bathroom wall and sewage backed up in the bath tub. It looked like the toilet exploded. The plumber came and removed the toilet and snaked out the pipes. He said we needed to have the septic tank emptied but I did not think that was the problem because we had just had it done 7 months before in June. We did however have it done again but even the septic tank guy said it was not very full. Things were fine for about 3 months then it happened again but to a lesser degree 3 more time then in August a really big mess. I got another plumber but he gave us no real answer. From that point on we decided to not flush any toilet paper and to cut down on our water usage. Since then there have been no more exploding toilets or overflows however we have really bad smells from time to time coming from the basement toilet and the gurgling is still there when I wash clothes. PLEASE!! We need help. We no longer have people over to the house or ask our families to come stay with us. This thing have taken over our lives and we just want our lives back. If anyone can help I would be ever so grateful. Thank your in advance.

Marie

If you are on a spectid system, the sewage from the tank, goes into drian lines, ( drain fields) if they are clogged or if there is not enough lines for the addredd water a larger family may use) often new lines will have to be put in. Sewage backing up and there are no clogs in the drain line, normally mean that the drain fields are not working properly.

Also how deep is the septic tank and line running out, it will need to be lower than the toilet in the basement, ( assuming it has to be unless there is a pump added)

Also inside the septic tank, there are baffles before the drain field, in older tanks, ( esp concrete) this baffle breaks down over time allowing raw sewage to go into the drain fields, which helps clog them up.
Also sometimes roots get into the drain fields clogging them up.

I think you main issue is a sewer line that is clogging down stream of that basement toilet. The sewage you found in the "Exploding toilet" was likely sewage from a toilet on the first or second floor. Your gurgle also makes me think you should also rod down your vent stack from the roof, not good to try this time of the year for you. Did the plumber rod the drain all the way to the tank, they are usually within 30 ' of the house. If there is no clean out you can pul the toilet and run down that pipe. Be sure to properly install a new wax ring under the toilet since that is also a frequent source of sewer gas getting inside.