“As if there’s not enough going on right now, the toilet is clogged up!” Kristina said. “I don’t know what made this happen,” she said, glancing toward the room where her two young children were engaged in remote learning, “although I have my suspicions.”
As plumbers in Brooklyn, we don’t want to rat anyone out – but we can confirm Kristina’s suspicions that inappropriately flushed items lie behind a significant percentage of clogged toilets. Sometimes kids are tired of doing their homework and try to make it disappear down the toilet bowl.
More often, it’s other items, such as baby diapers, feminine hygiene products, and so on that get lodged in sewer drain pipes and cause annoying, messy clogs.
What are the other common causes of toilet clogs?
What happens if everyone in the household can honestly say they didn’t flush anything down the drain and yet the toilet is still clogged? Here are some of the most common causes we see here in Brooklyn:
Sewer drain pipe damage: especially common in older buildings as well as buildings where a great deal of work has been done outside of the building. When sewer drain pipes become crushed, pinched, or otherwise compromised, it can lead to toilet clogs. Worse, this kind of damage can also lead to a leak in the sewer drain pipe – a messy, unhealthy situation that needs to be addressed by a New York plumber fast!
Tree root penetration into the sewer drain pipe is also a somewhat common problem. This isn’t as common here in the city as it is in the suburbs, but as we all know, a tree grows in Brooklyn. Tree roots seek out water, which sewer drain pipes are full of. Your New York plumber can do a specialized type of visual inspection to determine if this is the issue in your home.
