How Do You Fix the Pressure on a Toilet Flush?

[jimboburnsy]

Originally Posted by motown mary

I searched this forum because I am having a similar problem in my home. The sink & shower drains are slow too. Drains in the second bathroom are slow too (sinks but not shower, bath or toilet), and the kitchen sink is slow too. We just bought this house. Does this mean we have major plumbing issues???

This sounds to me like you need to have a plumber come out and snake the drain pipes (approx. $150). When I bought my home I was having a similar issue. My plumber came out and ran the power snake through all of the clean-outs. He retrieved a pile of nasty, disgusting, old paper towels. Everything has worked fine since then. Evidently the previous owner didn't always stay on top of his toilet paper inventory and would use paper towels in a pinch. For anyone out there who does that, STOP! You're probably better off driving to the store with an "incomplete download" than trying to flush paper towels. You will eventually experience the joys of a sewage back-up.

[Cosmic]

As mentioned a normal toilet flush has nothing to do with the inlet water pressure of the city mains to the apartment or toilet. That only comes into play after the toilet is flushed and the tank is being refilled. Lower water pressure just will result in the tank taking longer to fill.

The flush basically is dependent on the height / amount of the water in the tank. In the older toilet designs they drank lots of water, could be 3 gallons or a bit more. Water height in the tank is more important. You can adjust water height by bending the float rod to make the tank fill to a higher level.

If you remove the tank cover. Basically you bend the ball float rod so the ball at the end floats higher, this causes the shutoff valve to admit more water on a refill. More water is used per flush. Typically that improves flushing action. It is the height of water in the tank and the velocity from that in the throat of the toilet that gives that roaring flush.

If you have never done it, raising the tank level can result in the water just going out the overflow tube. You can not allow that to happen. Will use incredile amounts of water, toilet will run and run, never fully shutting off. You must ensure the elevated water level is below the overflow when the fill valve shuts.

There are a couple tricks. You can raise the overflow level by using another peice of tubing, sometimes you can do it with a bit of duct tape, wrapped around to act like a tube extension. The limit to raising tank level will be the flush lever on the tank has a hole, if the water level is raised to that hole level it will leak out on the floor.

This was a standard game to make the old toilets perform better. Raise the water level by a series of tricks. You could keep the amount of water used down by putting a normal brick into the water tank. This displaced that amount of water, some folks would use a brick or half gallon plastic milk carton filled with water. You find a position in the tank where it does not conflict with the working parts, normally that is to the far right side of the tank. You had much higher tank level but the amount of water used was about the same as prior to the fix. Done right you would use less than 3 gallons per flush, a modern toilet design uses a tad over 1 gallon per flush.

If you do not understand all this, find any old timer who was handy. This was a very, very common fix used on old toilets to make them work and limit the amount of water used.

The in-house water pressure is another different problem but it basically does not affect the toilet flush.

[BigJon3475]

Originally Posted by Simple Living

I just moved into a new apartment and the toilet has very low pressure when it flushes. Even with nothing in toilet, sometimes all the water does is swirl around, but never goes down. When it does go down, it's very weak and often takes two or three flushes to complete the flush. I've already tried turning the water on all the way, and even more towards the off position. Doesn't work.

I realize this is a landlord issue and I'll definitely call them, but I don't want to be fed a line that there's nothing they can do if there is.

Water pressure in the kitchen and bathroom sinks is quite low, too. I'm only on the third floor of a four story building. My last apartment was on the fifth floor, in the same city, and the water pressure was amazing!

Any suggestions?

For the sinks try removing the aerator (which is on the end of the faucet) and see if you get more pressure. If you do replace the aerators. The others have given good advice and I'm rolling with the toilet being older since I see many of those. Once replaced they work much better and save water. If pressure is low in the whole house I have found at the main shut off before a build up of minerals that were restricting flow. I find this most common though on the supply line that is tapped in to the mains for the ice maker.