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.

Sorry I failed to read all your posts OP. Ignore me!

Red worms thrive in damp soil filled with decaying organic matter. You find them round broken soil pipes.

Tomatoes too, and their seeds pass through the human digestive tract undamaged and ready to germinate.

Unlikely, unless you're putting lots of fruit down your drains. Fruit flies are attracted by ripe and rotting fruit, so if you have a food bin in your kitchen without a sealed lid, that's likely to be the source of infestation.

My understanding is that fruit flies do breed in drains.

They shouldn't be able to get in. Sinks, toilets, baths gave a water trap.

You might get them round a sink overflow if it is not clean (detergent, not bleach)

Hi, we have an adult autistic son who blocks toilets a lot, fortunately his tenancy includes drain clearage. His carers still have to deal with unpleasant aspects of clearing items as do we when he is home.
Where we live if you are on a network of drains i.e. not the end house it is the responsibility of the water company to clear external drains so may be worth checking(we are an end house unfortunately). Also due to his water use and play he gets a discount at his address because of his disability so may be worth pursuing to offset the cost.
A lot of the comments on here are well meaning but with our son it is all sorts of items that he puts down and the urge to do it at times overrides anything else. I found this post whilst researching drain modifications. I wish you well.

Best wishes I

Not sure if this helps but we had this issue a lot and we don’t have autistic children. My husband was constantly rodding the pipes. Local authority came out and put a camera down and said was a blockage on our side of boundary.
Our house insurance paid for a specialist company to come out and identify the issue. Turned out it was partly a tree root and partly a collapse of drain.
The company cleared as much as they could then put an expandable sleeve thing along the pipe. This has solved the problem.

I am hoping it might be resolved now that I have spent several more thousand on the problem. I had several drain surveys.

My friend had this issue with her children and had a bin next to the toilet for the children to put their toilet paper in. It wasn’t ideal as the bin was smelly if you didn’t empty it regularly but better than blocked toilets!