hi, I have put in two water-efficient toilets to our house because of the drought and water rationing, and noticed on both that after the filling is done, the bowl water level drops over about 30 sec by almost 1/2 inch, reducing the water surface area and depth by quite a bit, considering there isn't much there to begin with. As an experiment I opened the main house trap near where the house tree of pipes connect to city sewer (or is it called cleanout?), and the bowls don't drop level any more. So I think this means that the venting isn't working properly. I was going to go out on the roof and snake the 3-4 vent pipes up there, but decided to check in with this forum first in case snaking could hurt things more than help. This forum has been very helpful as I've shopped for toilets. Most of the posts about venting seem to be for new installs, any advice for diagnosing this kind of problem for one that's already done (house was built in1984)? note the old toilets were 3.5 gal, so the siphoning might have been there before and I just never noticed. also I suspect the two toilets are going into the same drain pipe line, since they sit just on the other side of a wall from each other. Possibly also two sinks, a bathtub and a showerstall tie in as well The pipes looked to be 3" at least when I had the toilets off. The vent pipes on the roof look a lot smaller.
so what do you think, OK to snake the vents from the roof with a $30 25' snake tool from Home Depot?
so what do you think, OK to snake the vents from the roof with a $30 25' snake tool from Home Depot?