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I have a toilet i replaced in a downstairs bathroom that no one uses (no one lives downstairs and rarely goes down there). This is a three floor house and just me and my brother.

It continually slowly flushes where it seems like there is a slow clog. I go down there with a plunger and clear it to where it flushes normally. We leave it alone a week and go to flush it and it slowly flushes ( water fills the bowl and slowly drains) after that. I have used a home depot snake and made sure the toilet is cleared as far as the snake goes (4ish feet maybe).

I've used the restroom after clearing it to make sure it works and it works fine after that for about a week.

I am at a loss for what I can try next and nothing seems to continually clog it.

What could possible be causing this? Googling hasn't given me any answers so maybe someone on here as experienced this? House was built in 1968.

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  • The other 2 restrooms (upstairs) work perfectly fine – bluerojo Aug 25 '17 at 4:43
  • I also had the house snaked before i bought it (from the outside line to the street) with no issues or cracks – bluerojo Aug 25 '17 at 4:44
  • This is at the lowest point in your house? You said you snaked the drain from the trap to the street? So eliminate between the trap to the toilet and actually to the other line (T) that goes to the next upstream item. Perhaps the use of the other toilets and how the run is plumbed is allowing the waste to feed back into the piping for the downstairs toilet. Or the clog is elsehwere and forcing other waste towards the basement toilet – noybman Aug 25 '17 at 5:27
  • Not necessarily the lowest. Lowest toilet. About 4ish feet lower is my basement and the actual water line. Lowest toilet and drain in my house – bluerojo Aug 25 '17 at 5:46
  • Stuff could be getting caught on it, in it. – noybman Aug 25 '17 at 5:54
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This problem could be caused by a bad slope in the waste line from the lower level toilet out to the exit point. As the upper level toilets are used the line to the lower toilet back fills and eventually creates the equivalent of a clog.

enter image description here

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  • Except that the drawing you give doesn't match what he answered in my questions above, so while slope could be a factor, I believe you need to move the bottom toilet and slope UP ONE to the center toilet, then, as is common, stick a LIP on the inside of the "T", allowing it to help catch the content from above, thus, allowing it to sit in the pipe. – noybman Aug 25 '17 at 12:48
  • What would be the fix for something like this? Looks expensive in my mind – bluerojo Aug 25 '17 at 14:45
  • First step would be to wait until "clogged" again. Then remove the toilet and get someone with a snake camera to view the inside of the pipe back to the main junction to see it there is standing water and "stuff" in the pipe. If so then the fix unfortunately is quite ugly by having to remove the floor over the pipes (assuming this is a basement concrete floor) to gain access and work out the routing to get proper slope. Another stop gap thing would be to put an automatic flush timer on that toilet and get it to flush every couple of days. – Michael Karas♦ Aug 25 '17 at 15:02
  • At this point, we are giving you the most likely case based on what you've told us. If you aren't confident in tackling this then call a pro. Doing it yourself would involve further investigation to make sure this is the cause, and then correcting the slope and/or correcting the blemish causing the issue to occur. – noybman Aug 25 '17 at 15:04
  • Thank you very much. This seems reasonable and the diagram simplifies the explanation and may align with how my sewage lines are ran. Time to call a pro and hopefully pay thousands! – bluerojo Aug 27 '17 at 22:55

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