Going insane with ongoing Plumbing/Drains Blockages/SpecialNeeds

[RunningAway2JoinTheCircus]

Solo parent of autistic kids here & homeowner. First homeowner. We have only one toilet. This means every time we have this issue, no one can go to the toilet for hours and hours and it’s massively difficult and stressful.

Soil pipe and soil stack (the pipes wot take your waste away to the sewer) are becoming continually blocked (over three years). I have spent about two grand on drain cameras, drain jetting, and £650 of work to fix a slight displacement which “may” be causing it.

This has not fixed it at all. I have had to get someone out twice in a week £350 to jet it.

Now the Drain Engineer No 2 is saying the camera shows another slight displacement which he didn’t think was too bad but which “may” be causing it.

Meanwhile 13 year old has been caught putting a cardboard tube down the toilet one night when he “ran out of paper” (there was loads nearby which I would have happily got). And last night, I found that the toilet wasn’t flushing and I (when I put my hand around the u bend) discovered big wet wedges of toilet paper. He initially said he had used only a little bit then there was what I would call loads.

The drain engineer has told me to pour buckets of water down the external drains every few days.

The house is 130 years old and a mid terrace.

The latest piece of work will involve excavation and drainage work in the yard to fix a displacement near a join, which will come to £1000. The drain fixing work is probably necessary but sometimes it feels like a blank cheque if it’s not resolving the issue.

Does anyone have experience of stopping SEN young people using so much toilet paper?

Is there some sensory reason why a child would be using massive amounts?

At this point, I’m considering marine toilet paper, different types of toilets which wash and dry your bottom, and I am starting to go slightly insane.

They absolutely do I certain circumstances. Is it an upstairs or downstairs toilet?

If it is your solid stack that is faulty why are the telling you to puor water into the drains? That would not make sense at all

I’d investigate different loo roll. They still sell that tracing paper type schools used to have Izal? It comes in sheets.

We should never use quilted toilet roll as it doesn’t disintegrate very well

We had a loo that blocked repeatedly so resorted to telling everyone in the house to use a total of 12 sheets of roll (3 small folded quantities) and then flush before using any more- might be worth trying but it does sound like a bigger issue.

Obviously you’ll need to get the work done but in the mean time, I’d firstly switch to cheapest toilet roll as it’s much thinner and flushes easier. Also could you put the toilet roll in a tissue box ? That way you only get one or two pieces at a time.
I know it might not be entirely practical but could possibly help.
hope it gets fixed plumbing issues are horrible x

The alternative would be to go "continental" and provide a bin for used loo roll rather than putting it down the loo. When we had some problems with drains in a block of flats, I had to do this for a month or so to enable the blockages to clear. It's not as unpleasant as it sounds, use a food type bin with a lockable lid, a liner inside, secure the liner and dispose in the outside bin every day.

You could try regularly filling the bath with cold water and letting it drain to flush the pipes.

You can retrofit a Japanese style bidet toilet seat so they can wash their bits and hopefully used less paper.

I was going to suggest those wet wipe toilet tissue, but only if they put them in the bin and not down the toilet.

We had something similar with PIL’s drains very recently. Camera ‘showed’ a misalignment. When they started digging they found the drain was laid running uphill 🙈 but by that point they were committed, had smacked the neighbour’s main pipe, and had to relay the whole lot.

I already commented above, but thought of another thing.

I know you have had a camera down the pipe, so this is unlikely. We recently bought a 100yr old house which had been derelict many years. It was connected to the mains, but originally had a septic tank in the back garden.

Instead of connecting the sewer pipe coming out of the house directly into the main sewer at the front of the house. It instead came out of the house, travelled 50m towards the old septic tank at the back, did a 180' turn, returned the 50m back to the house then continued further into the main sewer in the road!

Unlikely you have this, as it seems its excessive toilet paper being the issue, but possibly a funny pipe alignment might be contributing?

Upstairs

I just don’t understand why he woundy tell you to pour water down the drain. If the drain is blocked then call the water Co. If it’s not then it’s a plumber

Would your home insurance not cover this if there is a fault in the system somewhere?

For your son, how about 'Crete' rules, no paper down loo anymore, bin on side and it all goes in there, and gets emptied once a day. The entire island do it and seem to manage and its a lot hotter there than here! Then he can use as much as he likes but it goes in the bin (actually more is better as it wraps it all up).

Buy cheap ass toilet paper so it dissolves easier. I squish mine and take the cardboard tubes out of them all

Well I guess you were not here looking at the camera footage and he was. So he will have a different understanding.

Maybe get a nappy bin or similar for the loo roll rather than flushing

Cardboard and other foreign objects will cause blockages even if your drains are good. You can get a giant toilet roll holder that holds an enormous roll, and is designed to make it slow to drag a lot out. You see them in shops and offices. They have a cover than can be opened with a simple plastic "key" it only has one cardboard tube per enormous amount of paper. Or you can get a dispenser for the folded sheets, which has no roll.

If your plumber is telling you to tip water down it, he probably thinks it is just ordinary bogroll. There is a type of cistern used in men's urinals that can be set to flush at intervals when the room is occupied, I suppose this could prevent an unflushed accumulation.

Old houses, built before 1945, usually have cracked or broken drains because, in the ground, they are made of fired clay, which cracks due to ground movement or settlement, or earth ripples caused by wartime bombs. The plumber ought to have noticed if that was the problem, if s/he used a CCTV camera down there. Cracks can catch material and cause a blockage.

Bathrooms and WCs installed or altered after the house was built often have drain runs that are too flat or too long, or too angular, but I don't think that is your case.

Does your house have the original cast iron pipes above ground, or have they been renewed in plastic? Straight runs and gentle curves are difficult to block, it is more likely at a bend or inside a "manhole."

Do you gave a kitchen or rainwater gulley near the soil pipe, and does it overflow?

BTW, UK toilet pans are designed so they can hold an entire cisternfull of water without overflowing. So if you only flush it once, it will not overflow even if blocked. But if it is already full, and you flush it again, it will.

Thank you @PigletJohn. Yes, I have a couple of gulleys. It has the plastic soil stack above the ground. In fact, I have got a local drains company out and they have unearthed the pipes.

The gulleys have been known to overflow when things are bad. I’ve definitely seen sodden toilet paper emerging! It has happened so often now. I think you are right about the bend.

Then the blockage is downstream of the gulley, in the ground. Look in the next manhole, and see if it is full or empty. Having dug out the old clay pipes, I would certainly renew them in plastic.

Look out for red worms, and wild tomato plants.

Why @PigletJohn ?

I don’t have manholes but I’ve got pipes relaid and the gullies replaced with plastic.

I’ve had infestations of fruit flies previously and wondered if these were related to drains