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While I am pretty handy/knowledgeable, especially about old houses, plumbing is my weakness. I find it annoying, especially today.
Basement toilet is plugged up. Basement bathroom feeds to a pit about 80' away. Then a pump pumps the sewage up to the sewer outlet. The pump is working. I can hear it run, plus there is no backing up out of the drains (like when the pump broke once in the past).
When you take a shower, air bubbles come out of the toilet. You have to turn the shower off every few seconds or the bubbles get so violent that icky water splashes out. Plunging the toilet eventually pumps the water in the bowl down, but it does not clear. Fill the bowl up again and more plunging will pump the water level down, but still it will not clear. With most of the water out of the bowl, there was no bubbling when taking a shower, however when the bowl was filled again, the bubbling started again.
Shower is upstream of the toilet. Sinks are downstream of the toilet. Using the sinks does not make the toilet bubble.
So, before I pull the toilet out and look for some sort of blockage in the gooseneck, any ideas on the bubbles from the shower draining? I am wondering if this might be iced up vent(s). Would the entire bathroom share a single vent, or is there one for each fixture?
I hate pulling a toilet and reinstalling it. It is an icky job. I do not want to pull the danged thing out and find out the problem is something else (like a vent).
Sewer pipe in the slab is all PVC. I not think that matters other than maybe some sort of water pressure system work since it will not force sewage out of the pipe seams like sometimes happens with cast iron. I used to have a bladder thing that would hook to a hose and then inflate with water pressure to seal the drain and then jet high pressure water into the pipe to clear it. It worked pretty well until the dog ate it and I could not find another one. It was for sinks, not toilets. Do they make something like that for toilets?
Any suggestions?
Oh and it has been near or below zero around here most of the time since the beginning of the year, however we had a three day warm up where it got up to 55. The warm up did not stop the bubbling. So my frozen vent idea may be hogwash.
New symptoms? Or just with the current weather conditions?
If you're thinking it's weather related- a vent on the roof is highly suspect. If this has been an on going "problem" I would suspect a waste line problem- particular clog at a junction, wrong type of junction, broken, cracked line, float setting on sump pump.
You have a macerator pump in a sump. Water flows from the shower, beneath the toilet, to the sump.
For there to be bubbles coming up out of the toilet bowl, what would have to happen?
If a vent was clogged completely and the drain line was open, the water could be sucked out of the bowl by the action of the pump.
If the drain and vent were both completely blocked, water would overflow the bowl.
Logically, the problem is not in the toilet gooseneck.
My first uninformed guess is that there is a partial drain blockage, check valve, or defective pump that backs up the waste and air before forcing it into the pipe leading to the main drain.
I do ot think there is a vent, but there is a problem. Basement now has a big puddle of water at the front (well away form any pipe. Since the ground is frozen, it cannot be coming in from inside. The pipe is obviously plugged up somewhere and leaking. But where?
This pips is in the slab and runs under flooring, carpeting, walls. The sub-floor has little plastic feet so air (and water) can circulate underneath. The leak could be anywhere.
Time to call the insurance company and the plumber. Insurance will not fix the leak but they will take care of the sewage now running under the floor and walls. What a mess. Ugh.
I do not know how a plumber is going to locate the leak without tearing out floors walls and the slab. However they probably have to come out anyway, since there is sewage under and ont hem. This is a $20,000 problem now.
I pinpointed the area where water seems to be coming from to flood the basement. It is near a clean out. That may make it easier to find and correct the leak part. I think the pump is not working too. However the bigger issue is how much sewer water is under the flooring and soaked into he walls.
We will get a plumber out as soon as we have some extra money. Meanwhile, we just shut down the whole basement.
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