Toilet water in bowl slowly drains minutes after flushing has completed

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BobL43

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Thanks TerryLove for this forum...

The water in my toilet bowl drops very slowly minutes after a flush has been completed.

Here IS what happened to me and this is no theory. I wanted to mention this here because this is the first place that pops up for a search of "water drains from toilet bowl."


So, last night no problem. This morning the bowl fills and just kind of slowly drains. Took maybe 30 seconds.

The plunger wouldn't work because the water kept draining. The hosepipe I stuck up the old spout ran and ran and no help.

I suspected right off that there was a clog, but I kept at it. Finally I went outside. There it was.

What happened was that it was clogged. But, unbeknown to my humble self, all that water was flushing outside the bathroom wall through the vent pipe. (Which just happens to be a pipe sticking out which is connected to the flue thingy from time to time. This time it wasn't. So, when I'd flush, run water, whatever, it was just going outside. Dittos the water in the bowl. I don't know how it siphoned out, but it did.

The fix was to get my handy plumber snake and do some shoving. Luckily it is a straight through shot from the vent pipe through the trap and on out to the sewer. I shoved awhile and then blessed resistance! YES!

Back inside I flushed and it was perfect. I did it like 5 more times.

The moral to this story is that if you own one of these new short flushing water saving miracle toilets like me, you MUST HOLD that handle down to MAKE SURE ALL the water moves the load on down the system and out. If you don't, and it hangs mid way, like happened to me, there is probably no help for it outside of the old roto rooter treatment.

Of course, if the up pipe had been connected to the vent pipe, the bowl would have just filled up and maybe the plunger would have worked. But as happens sometimes it was the perfect poo poo storm.

When your toilet is draining out like mine, consider a clog. Try the simple things first. There is always time to tear out your bathroom if need be.

How'd you like my handle, btw???

Your handle is very unique and original:p
 

WJcandee

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Good story of how you fixed your clog. I have to say, though, that the consensus on here is that the waste does not and need not roll all the way to the street on one flush. It is generally not recommended that you turn your 1.6gpf toilet into a 3.5gpf toilet by holding the handle down until the toilet tank drains completely. Using the shower, washing dishes, flushing urine -- all of these will move the solids along any properly-functioning waste pipe.
 

Dwain

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The water in my toilet bowl drops very slowly minutes after a flush has been completed. The water in the bowl won't empty completely but it does drop considerably lower than right after it completed flushing. It has me a little puzzled because there isn’t any leak anywhere around the bowl or tank and the water in the bowl does eventually stop dropping after a while. I installed a new FluidMaster Flush Valve & Flapper over the weekend but that didn't fix the problem.

How do I get the water in the bowl to stay at the height it's at right after completing a flush? Is this a DWV problem? A couple of years ago I had a bird caught in the pipe. It eventually turned up inside a toilet!!! My first experience with a clogged vent! :eek: Could a blocked vent be the cause of this problem again?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Help please! I have a similar problem with an elderly friends toilet, when the toilet is flushed and re-filling, the water level in the bowl jumps up to almost normal height, but continues to drain out (while re-filling, and afterwards until the water level gets down below the top of the drain tube portion of the bowl). The toilet is on a concrete slab, no evidence of leaking (unless its leaking directly into the sewer line). The supply tube has a regulator on it, and I currently have it set "wide open". She has the exact same toilet & guts in another bathroom, and the one in question is taking about 4x as long to get the tank full & water stop running (all the excess water is going right down the drain). Not knowing what exactly the problem is, I hate to suggest replacing the toilet, I'm afraid she will spend the $ and end up with the same problem. Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
 

Terry

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The supply tube has a regulator on it, and I currently have it set "wide open". She has the exact same toilet & guts in another bathroom, and the one in question is taking about 4x as long to get the tank full & water stop running (all the excess water is going right down the drain).

The regulator from the fill valve to the overflow tube is an adjustment to prevent overfilling the bowl and save water. Forcing more water into the tank by closing it down a bit helps to refill the tank quicker.
 

trash

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Just wanted to confirm that I had this issue and my problem was like ToiletDrain said. It was a clog. Sounds backwards that water is dropping low due to a clog, but that is what it was. One big giveaway was that before the water level dropped, it filled up much higher than it should, close to the lip of the bowl. Then it drained and kept draining until there was little water left in the bowl. So pull out the snakes and plungers before you go pulling out the toilets.
 

diylife

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Just to add my own experience, yesterday I noticed every time I flushed the toilet the existing water was slow to go down and because of that the refill water that entered brought the water level higher than you normally see in a flush. Everything still went down though, just slower, and the toilet refilled properly. Good old me thought okay it works, maybe if I don't do anything it'll just fix itself.

Well today when I flushed it everything went down slow again, looked even slower actually, but after the toilet refilled it would slowly drain itself so that only a little water was left at the bottom. I read the advice in this thread it could just be a clog so I plunged it and yep, that fixed it. I didn't think a clog could manifest itself in this way, I thought it would be something more complicated like the sewer venting being blocked, flush valve, or flapper, but it was a good old clog. When in doubt, plunge!
 
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