I'm a manager for a store in the mall. Since May of this year we've had our toilet clog 4 times and flood our store (it being in the stock room, out of sight, out of mind, when we realise the toilet is overflowing it's too late). Every time we've called plumbers to fix the problem, and it works for a short time, then within a month or so it's overflowing again. After the 3rd flooding my store's home office requested the mall to call a plumber to find out if there's a problem in main lines. The plumbers my company hired told me they found "white rats" which I had always thought tampons were flushable, BUT I made sure all my girls at work knew not to flush them. The plumber the mall hired informed me they found white rats and paper towels clogging up the lines. Since then it has been 2-3 months with no problem, my staff is tired of flooding, and we JUST got the old nasty stained flooded carpet out and new carpet in. I trust my employees when they say they have been following the "only toilet paper can be flushed" rule. Well yesterday, Saturday our toilet has flooded for the 4th time!

I've worked at this store for 10 years now and have NEVER had an overflowing toilet until NOW, even with my staff flushing tampons in the years prior. A lot of changes have been made in our mall, it had been expanded and updated. We are directly across from the food court and the public bathrooms. The public bathrooms have been greatly updated from being 4 stalls to 10 in the ladies room, as for the mens I have no idea! That was completed by Nov of last year.

In April of this year the store right next to us was expanded and updated putting their toilet on the opposite side of the wall to ours. I know in the past they've come and asked if we could spare them a roll of toilet paper every now and then, being neighborly I always shared. My assistant manager once got tired of sharing our supplies of bags and what not with them on a constant basis since it comes out of our profits. When 1 of my employees got off work Saturday she went to our neighboring store to use their restroom to change clothes for a wedding she was heading to (since our's wasn't suitable at that moment), and I asked her to see if they had toilet paper. When she came back she told me they had kleneex on one side and paper towels on the other, but NO toilet paper.

Is it possible that they are clogging the lines and we end up being directly affected from their lack of responsibility? If so how can this be proven? Because I know my store is doing everything right, and being socked with a plumbing bill every other month is not fair! Not to mention the damaging of merchandise! Again we've NEVER had this problem before and I can not understand why out of the blue we are! Any insight would be appreciated!

Yipes!

You may only have one choice. Install a system such as Watercop > Overview which will detect water and turn it off. There may be other systems like it.
These can at least stop the influx of water and turn it off and sound an alarm. It would be nice to be able to make the sensor tamper proof.

Not sure if you have a tank type toilet or not, but if you have a tank type you can replace it with a pressure assist toilet. They flush just about anything.

As for proving - a video inspection cam ready to go might help. Pull up your toilet and look around at the neighbors lines.

Well, those are my ideas. A bit silly, maybe. Hopefully someone can massage this into something more meaningful. This is a first pass.

Look at the layout of the bathroom. I've been in many that have the signs posted "No paper towels in toilet". The fault is the layout. It's a toilet, paper towel dispenser and sink in a line. The towels are the selfold variety and you know sometimes a whole bunch comes out, Where do the land? In the toilet.

If they changed to a motion activated dispenser and/ot MOVED the dispenser, the problem will go away.

I really need to know if you have the tankless toilets with the flush valve with a 1" line, the standard tank toilet or the pressure assist variety. The pressure assist variety has a plastic tank when you lift the tank lid.

We are a small store, total of 8 of us employees there. This is our bathroom in our stock room. No customers are allowed back there. The paper towels is on the opposite side of the restroom next to the sink and trash can, they would have to walk out of their way to throw it in the toilet vs just dropping it in front of them.

As for the toilet, it's just a small standard normal old style toilet, no bells or whistles, much like what we have in my apartment. It's got a tank, you can lift the lid off the tank and then you have the cylinder thing with the chain and all of that stuff. I have no clue what all of that is called. I do know that a few months before this all started a part of that plastic stuff broke off and they replaced it. Could that be the problem?

Plastic stuff being the pole the cylinder thing goes up and down on when the chain is pulled and the water flushes, then the tank refills. Sorry to sound stupid to the terminology... I'm just a 28 year old chick who's a retail manager! LOL

Women hygiene products, like tampons, make up removal pads, and kleenex, but also paper towels should NEVER be flushed down the toilet. Reason is: they are designed to soak water and keep it in it. They will not dissolve like toilet paper. They will drop to the bottom of sewer like a rock and stay there. It is important that you get this message across to you female employees. Tip: provide specially designed Tampon dispenser in every stall. Don't keep paper towels, kleenexes and make up removal pads in bathrooms. Post signs inside each bathroom. You have to find way to get the message across. It may be easier since you are woman.

Also, if your neighbor has toilet hooked up to your sewer line, chances are that their habits effect your bathroom as well. In this case, contact Mall Owner / Manager and ask him/her to inform all tenants about this situation.

To tell you the truth, I agree with Milo too.

Investing in a pressure assist toilet will help. See: http://www.flushmate.com/DocumentLib...riefing-12.pdf

The technology cannot be retrofitted to an existing toilet.

8 people is a lot of people to be using 1 toilet daily. The toilet will be cleaner. You'll get a more powerful flush and you won't have to wait very long for the tank to fill.

Some clogs happen because people don't wait for the tank to fill.

8 people do not use the toilet daily, we usually work 1 person at a time, again we are a small store in the mall. Bathroom is used a total of 3 times a day maximum. We are ONLY flushing toilet paper for months now. The store next to us was just remodeled and expanded into two spots, their toilet is now on the opposite side of the wall of our toilet, now being directly connected to our line. It is the people next door that I know for a fact that keep running out of toilet paper... Again this past Saturday when we flooded 1 of my employees went to their bathroom and they had no toilet paper at our neighboring store.

For a moment lets define flooding. Let's assume 1.6 per flush and let's assume (wrong - overestimated) that there is 1.6 Gallons of water in the tank and 1.6 in the bowl.

There is space in the bowl which is usually enough to be contained in the tank on an overflow. OK with some left over. The flood should not be all that much water on a first flood. If someone flushed with it up at the top, then there might be considerable amount of water. Like flushing twice, but would you expect your employees to promptly report it and turn the water off at the bottom?

Now, if your fill valve stuck and there was a downstream clog then water MAY leak around the bottom of the bowl and to a rare extent the top. In this case the toilet would have to be continuously trying to fill with the water going down the overflow. You should see ripples in the toilet water and hear water if this is the case.

Do you think we are talking about the latter scenereo?

Usually failures occur on flush and by the time you wash your hands, you can see the overflow.

You can reach down and turn the water off as fast as you can. In fact, if a 1/4 turn valve isn't there, it should be there or you can lift the tank, stop the flow and continue turning off the water.

So let's ask the following:
1. Is flood at the floor or over the top?
2. Do you think it's the latter scenereo?

And, not saying we can see anything, but can you post a picture of the tank with the lid off. Use "Go Advanced" "Manage Attachments" to do so.

I'm getting the idea that you "find" the toilet overflowing and no one sees it do it on it's own. This doesn't usually make sense.

So, where do you think the overflow is coming from?
1. top of bowl?
2. back of tank?
3. at the floor?
4. the supply fitting?

We are on the upper level of the mall, so when we flood the stores below us are affected and our sometimes our neighboring store. Our bathroom is in our stock room and we don't always go back there, because we work by ourselves a lot of the time, we go in there, do what we need and get out as quick as possible since we are leaving our store floor unattended, by that time the toilet still hasn't refilled the tank with water. Our stockroom door is suppose to be closed at all time, company policy. So it becomes out of sight, out of mind (as I stated before). We stay pretty steady, the times we have flooded (except for 1 time) when we caught it, it was already too late... our stockroom flooded and while clearing that out, it has gone under/through the wall to our counter area and then our carpet on the sales floor has been affected. This Saturday's flood was not as bad as it has been in the past, but I will put it this way my shoes are still soaked!! And I had to get my carpet cleaner into the store and had to empty the tank twice it pulled up that much water!

But regardless of all that, my company called the plumbers in today... they did find a paper towel LOL, which I know it came from the neighboring store since they are out of toilet paper... BUT this time I asked my company to allow the plumbers to send a camera down the pipes to see if our neighbors pipe was right above ours and connected in that fashion, dropping the paper towels and whatnots into our pipe and backing us up. That isn't exactly the case, BUT theirs does elevate higher then mine does, so in some sense I do suffer repercussions of their neglect. BUT when you go 31 feet in, there is a jagged lip inside where two pipes are welded together, once you go 1/2 a foot past that the camera went into 3 feet of water... the plumber called a "belly." This definitely isn't my company's area of responsibility... so it's now a fight to get the mall to take care of the problem correctly... BUT the mall I work at was suppose to have sent a plumber with a camera in the last time we flooded... so we will see what happens. My employee had a camera with her and video taped the camera scope work that was done.

Luckily I was able to prove today that this was not the neglect of any of my staff, myself nor my company! And that was what I was truly hoping to accomplish! The plumber even told me that the jagged lip is bad enough that even if it was going to give even toilet paper a difficult time getting by, even environmental friendly T.P.

Thank you all for your help, I greatly appreciate it!

Job well done!