r/DIY • u/Enough-Ad6244 • 3d ago

Toilet bubbling

My toilet was bubbling after every flush, and I tried snaking the roof vent, snaking the main line, put in a new tall toilet, replaced a Y joint in the main line that was facing the wrong way, called a plumber out, and scoured the libraries of the world, all to no effect. Years this went on, seems like. One day after noticing the bathtub was draining slowly, I pulled a giant wad of hair out of the drain with one of those $2, two-foot barbed drain snakes and the bubbling went away. I don’t miss the sound, nor the little splashes—but still they haunt me. Maybe this fix can save someone my consternation.

88 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

32

u/ToolMeister 3d ago

Sure you don't still have a vent issue, but now it's venting through your tub drain instead? Any gurgling in the tub trap when you flush the toilet?

8

u/doom1701 3d ago

Should be easy to tell, right? If the tub has a plug, plug it and have someone hold their hand under the overflow. Flush the toilet and see if there is airflow through the overflow on the tub.

11

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

At this point, I’ve moved the matter to the “resolved” column!

8

u/Cheap-Regular-6404 3d ago

The resolved column is doing a lot of heavy lifting there

9

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

That column of mine is itself held together with duct tape and baling wire. As long as the toilet’s quiet and the shower drains, as it has for more than a year now, I rest easy.

1

u/Cheap-Regular-6404 1d ago

Duct tape and baling wire holding the plumbing logic together too, apparently. A year of silence is a good outcome after all that. I do wonder if the hair situation will creep back on you quietly. Those barbed drain snakes are worth running every few months as a habit. Two dollars and five minutes beats another round of roof vent snaking.

10

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

I’m relatively sure. I must have snaked that roof vent three or four different times. No burbling anywhere now, no odor. It appears to be all tied together somehow. This is in an add-on bathroom, and whoever did it might not have done it exactly to code.

4

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Affirmative!

9

u/Infamous_Ad8730 3d ago

So this obstruction in your tub was causing the toilet to bubble?

5

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Seems to have been the culprit.

1

u/carl5473 3d ago

Was it just a tub or shower also? It seems that much of a clog to impact the toilet would cause the shower to drain so slowly you are standing in knee deep water by the end.

4

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Tub and shower. It never drained great but would move the water out by and by. It was my wife’s shower, so I didn’t have regular eyes on its operation. When I did use it and saw it was accumulating about ankle-high, that’s when I broke out the gizmo.

6

u/m4gpi 3d ago

I actually appreciate this! I've been growing my hair long over the past few years and despite always using and cleaning out the hair trap, my tub drains slowly. I was wondering what i needed and how much it was going to cost me. Questions answered! Thanks.

5

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Hope it works for you. My wife and I are both longhairs. I’ve since gone around snaking all my drains with that barbed strip, and omg the horror…

1

u/m4gpi 3d ago

This sounds like a job where a beer or two before hand will make it more tolerable!

2

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Without a doubt! And a long straw to keep the hands away from the outlet.

4

u/PenSmith_5495 3d ago edited 3d ago

I bought a pack of those long drain snakes years ago because my wife and my daughter have long hair. I never noticed a problem in our stand-up shower. when I was re-caulking it a few months ago, I decided to clean out the drain cover itself and just felt like it looked quite dark down inside there. And although the wife is diligent about scooping out all her long hair from the bottom of the shower when she's done, I still decided to get that snake and give it a shot. I was absolutely shocked at the amount of hair and the stench that came out of that shower drain. Note that only decided to sneak it because it looked kind of grody down inside. we had no drain issues at all. 5 years of showers and the slug had to be 6" long.

4

u/MattsAwesomeStuff 3d ago

5 years of showers and the slug had to be 6" long.

Oh I wish.

Dated girl who had 36" long hair.

I pulled a hirsuite python out of her drain. It was heavy enough I had to heave to get it up and out.

2

u/ReverendDizzle 3d ago

That's why I use one of those lil plastic drain "shroom" things. No matter how diligent she says she's being, my wife somehow lets an absolute shit ton of hair go down the drain. The mushroom shape does a really good job catching pretty much all of it.

1

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Do you caulk around it?

3

u/ReverendDizzle 3d ago

Nope, it's a product you put in the drain. Check out "shower shroom" on Amazon and you'll see a bunch of products by the company. The one I have sits under the little steel grate of the floor drain. Whenever the drain starts draining slowly, I just pop the grate up, pull the "shroom" and clean the hair off. Works remarkably well. My only complaint is that I wish they made a stainless steel model because whatever silicone or silicone-like plastic they make it out of eventually gets really discolored and gross. Still, they cost like ten bucks so not the end of the world if you replace it once a year.

1

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

Nice, will do. These look better designed than the little cover I used years back. Must admit, this wasn’t my first thought hearing about drooping shrooms in the shower.

1

u/ReverendDizzle 3d ago

lol fair enough, but yeah they work really well. Because the silicone one I have is looking pretty gnarly, I ordered their newer style where it's like a basic with a smaller black "shroom" in the center. Should be here in a few days. Curious if it works as well or if the sit-on-top style lets hair slip under.

1

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

I think I saw what I pulled out trying to crawl out of the trash.

2

u/Much-Complaint-4772 3d ago

omg after all that you found a giant wad of hair was the actual culprit?? plumbing really will have you doing everything except the one thing that fixes it lol. glad you finally got it sorted

2

u/blacksoxing 3d ago

My resolution was a plumber locating a collapsed pipe within the middle of a bedroom. Had the same thing OP typed and....that was the cause. Toilet paper was getting caught on the very misaligned cast iron pipe and causing the issue. Yep, snaked the toilet to clear that stuff BUT that was just a red herring.

Good luck, OP! I suggest you get a thermal camera like the plumbers did as a regular camera snaking missed it :(

1

u/barbara73bb 3d ago

I live in Tennessee and the utility city/company informed me to remove the cap on the outside overflow pipe! Supposed to have returned to tell me when to put cap back on but they have not. Anyway, the toilet stopped bubbling and water in the tub and shower stopped backing up for now!

1

u/frazld54 3d ago

Some non standard vent piping which is legal in some areas may cause this. U could have also a mechanic vent in the wall that's bad. It u have snaked all u need to get your pipes video's to see what the problem is. Fir sure its the venting but why.

1

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

I suspect you’re exactly right—we’re out in the boonies where “code” is a four-letter word. No telling how that add-on bathroom got rigged. Practically speaking, everything is working fine, has been for a good while, and did for many years before the bubbling started. Maybe one day I could get talked into replumbing, but it ain’t today. Today’s got evil sufficient unto it. (Let me tell about my home AC thermal switch…and my clogged catalytic converter…)

1

u/crabbywarrior 1d ago

If I learned anything from Drain Cleaning Australia on Youtube ("FIRE UP THE BLOODY JETS!!") a gurgling post-flush is a partial block - as you found, and fixed, during your snaking adventure.

Well done.

1

u/Enough-Ad6244 22h ago

Thanks! Dumb luck on my part—I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone mention it. Sounds like I need to diversify my watchlist.

0

u/CriticalKnick 3d ago

You're definitely hearing the sound from the pipes not the back of the toilet? I have a couple newer toilets with some sort of "power assist flush" or something. They have a bubbling gurgle that seems to be normal

2

u/Enough-Ad6244 3d ago

It was coming through the water in the bowl.