When toilet contents come up to meet you...

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Toby

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Had 2 storey extension built over last year involving 2 new bathrooms and thus lots of messing with drains and sewers. For a few months now the downstairs toilet has been showing a worrying tendency for the bowl to occasionally fill quite high with water when flushing. Most of the time its fine though. Then today it very nearly overflowed. Can anyone tell me if this is the fault of the toilet itself or is it likely to be a bigger problem with sewer pipes? Is there something we can do ourselves or should I call a plumber pronto? Thanks.
 
Probably a blockage somewhere. Perhaps checking the manhole(s) outside the house might help identify the problem. It's often the case that construction work can lead to debris being left in the pipes. You might be able to get (rent?) a set of sewer rods and attempt to tackle this yourself but if in doubt get a plumber.
 
Had a similar problem myself about 10 years ago. Old house and the drop from the downstairs loo to the main drains wasn't very far, so it did tend to get backed up.

Only real solution is to do your number twos UPSTAIRS!!;)
 
Thanks ACA, I was afraid it might be an unavoidable consequence of having a downstairs loo with no gravity helping the process. We can be careful with it but its visitors who don't know how to deal with it that I'm worried about.

Is it true a toilet is designed to not hold enough water to cause bowl to overflow unless its flushed repeatedly when blocked? I have this image of our ajoining rooms being flooded with toilet water!!
 
We had a blocked toilet once because of a plant growing inside the sewer pipes. It just shows you should always spit out fruit seeds!
 
A downstairs toilet should work fine - it's not that you need a 10 foot drop to suck the water out!

You have an obstruction of some sort, whether it's a blockage or a difficulty for air to enter the system (via a vent pipe) to assist in the flow.

You only need a fall of, I believe, about 50mm every 4 metres to get a good flow in your sewer pipes. In fact if the fall is too great you'll have another kind of problem... let's call it "silting" to protect any sensitive souls around here!
 
Is it true a toilet is designed to not hold enough water to cause bowl to overflow unless its flushed repeatedly when blocked? I have this image of our ajoining rooms being flooded with toilet water!!
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Don't know, never had it over flow. It tended to block easily, especially if the weather had been rotten - a lot rain water going into the drains.
 
Thanks, its fine now so seems to only happen if kids have left loads of loo roll clogging it up between flushes. Maybe we're okay.
 
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