bathroom plumbing needs air vent?

[Duke007]

I have a small bathroom, 3 drains and a commode. The toilet doesn't flush with any force. I've changed the tank parts and the water flows well into the toilet, but only slowly evacuates. The septic was emptied just a week ago and the water does go out quickly if I pour a bucket of water into the bowl, so I don't think the pipe is plugged. I have read online that all drains should have an air vent usually extending up through the roof, but apparently this is not the procedure here in Isaan. All I have is a small vent stcking up from the septic tank. Could the lack of a vent be causing this problem? If so, any suggestion on how I would add a vent in a fully finished bathroom?

[steve187]

is the small vent outside and about a metre above the ground, with a tee on the top

[eyecatcher]

If you have one of those concrete ring manholes one of the main drawbacks with them is that they are never dug deep enough or the outlet drain from the wc is too low.

so, inparticularly in the wet season, ground water is high and none of the fluids leach away and just fills up above the outlet.

 effectively your drains could be blocked up  within days of the poo man coming to clean it out.

 

Adding a vent elsewhere on the drain run i feel will be ineffective in this scenario.

 

If you are lucky enough to have a plastic onion septic then they are usually deep enough and the drain outlet comes in very near the top. the vent should normally be adequate but a vent on the tank is the wrong place, it should be nearer your wc.

I mentioned in another post that those small vents can become clogged up with dead mosquitoes and then a vacuum is created, and you toilet will not flush. in my case I have added a 4 inch stack abover my soil pipe.

 

The vent stack doesn't have to reach to the roof, but often its the only place that you cannot smell the pleasant odours. if you have a place you dont walk then it can be set lower.

 

[grollies]

In the UK it's called a stink pipe.

 

They are usually tee'd into the toilet waste pipe near the loo and run up to the roof. Topped off with a mushroom top or wire cage. They are the same diameter as the toilet waste pipe to avoid problem as mentioned above by eyecatcher.

 

I never saw a vent on the septic tank in the UK.

 

Everything here is different. We have the 1/2" pipe with a tee on top but seems to work ok.

 

The other thing I fitted here were U-bends to sinks and showers. We had horrible smells in the bathrooms at one time. 

Edited March 3, 2017 by grollies

[CGW]

The vent pipe from our Septic tanks (plastic type) are 1 1/2" which is the size of the fitting on the tank, if your vent pipe is smaller it "may" be worth changing? could be plugged as previously mentioned or just not enough venting?

[Pogust]

You usually put the vent at the beginning (highest point) of the poo pipe. Sometimes it's the WC, sometime any other drain.

 

Two reasons; first to let air in and avoid vacuum so the poo drains out properly. Secondly to create a air flow through the septic to allow oxygen in and allow the aerobic bacteria to digest the poo without too much smell. The anaerobic bacteria that take over in a oxygen deployed environment are very smelly. 

 

So you should have 4" intake on the tank in the ground, and 4" pipe up above the roof. Creating a good airflow through to help bacteria eat the poo and let out the smell where no one need to feel it.

[eyecatcher]

9 hours ago, grollies said:

In the UK it's called a stink pipe.

 

in Northern UK  its called a stench pipe (colloquial)

 

you must be a posh southerner

[eyecatcher]

The beauty of British drainage systems is that they have accessible manholes at EVERY change in direction and at the point of every Wc meeting the drain run.

They are not sealed lids unless internally; then there are rodding access points, then there are vented stacks.

the only time there is a problem is when nappies and sanitary towels go down the drain or else tree roots disrupt the flow.

i will dig out a tale about blocked drains, just to lighten up this shitty topic

[Duke007]

On 3/2/2017 at 8:44 PM, steve187 said:

is the small vent outside and about a metre above the ground, with a tee on the top

The small vent sticks up about 1 meter and there is no cover on the top.

[Duke007]

On 3/2/2017 at 8:44 PM, steve187 said:

is the small vent outside and about a metre above the ground, with a tee on the top

 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Duke007
Duplicate

[Duke007]

12 hours ago, CGW said:

The vent pipe from our Septic tanks (plastic type) are 1 1/2" which is the size of the fitting on the tank, if your vent pipe is smaller it "may" be worth changing? could be plugged as previously mentioned or just not enough venting?

So the only vent you have is the one directly above the septic tank?

[Duke007]

On 3/2/2017 at 9:43 PM, eyecatcher said:

If you have one of those concrete ring manholes one of the main drawbacks with them is that they are never dug deep enough or the outlet drain from the wc is too low.

so, inparticularly in the wet season, ground water is high and none of the fluids leach away and just fills up above the outlet.

 effectively your drains could be blocked up  within days of the poo man coming to clean it out.

 

Adding a vent elsewhere on the drain run i feel will be ineffective in this scenario.

 

If you are lucky enough to have a plastic onion septic then they are usually deep enough and the drain outlet comes in very near the top. the vent should normally be adequate but a vent on the tank is the wrong place, it should be nearer your wc.

I mentioned in another post that those small vents can become clogged up with dead mosquitoes and then a vacuum is created, and you toilet will not flush. in my case I have added a 4 inch stack abover my soil pipe.

 

The vent stack doesn't have to reach to the roof, but often its the only place that you cannot smell the pleasant odours. if you have a place you dont walk then it can be set lower.

 

It sounds like the consensus is that I should have had a larger vent placed near the toilet. But since I don't, and I don't really want to tear out the bathroom floor to correct this, is there any alternative? Retrofit of some kind or just place larger pipe right into the septic tank? Thaks for all the replies.

[steve187]

does the vent pipe smell, also try listening while the toilet is flushed

 

where does the overflow from the tank go

Edited March 4, 2017 by steve187

[grollies]

13 hours ago, eyecatcher said:

in Northern UK  its called a stench pipe (colloquial)

 

you must be a posh southerner

I reckon 'stench' is posher than 'stink'.

 

Northerner myself, Cheshire.

 

You are now going to tell me that Cheshire is southern compared to where you originate.

[grollies]

6 hours ago, Duke007 said:

It sounds like the consensus is that I should have had a larger vent placed near the toilet. But since I don't, and I don't really want to tear out the bathroom floor to correct this, is there any alternative? Retrofit of some kind or just place larger pipe right into the septic tank? Thaks for all the replies.

Yep, where the waste pipe exits the house wall, dig down, expose the pipe and tee in an upright. Run it up the house wall to the overhanging eaves.

 

Our septic tank is around 6m from the house. A vent pipe sticking out of the ground there would look distictly odd. Running a buried vent from the tank to somewhere less conspicuous would necessitate an inverted U at the septic tank which isn't going to work well as a vent.

 

Don't forget to put something over the open end at the top to keep animals out.

[CGW]

8 hours ago, Duke007 said:

So the only vent you have is the one directly above the septic tank?

Yes, I'm sure it is preferable to have more than one vent pipe, none of the houses I have lived in, in Thailand have had anything but a vent from the tank & never been a problem.

[livram]

I had the exact same problem this year. I had tried most everything. Finally ended up replacing the toilet and when I checked the old toilet I found an old washrag and a small cosmetic bottle trapped inside the toilet. Plus since the toilet was 20 years old also it had quite a bit of lime buildup restricting the outlet hole.

 

 Before you start digging you may want to remove your toilet to get a look inside. A local can remove and replace the toilet in an hour or so - cost 500 baht if you an't do it yourself.

 

Or if your toilet is old you can buy a new one at Homepro starting at 2000 baht.

[eyecatcher]

7 minutes ago, livram said:

 Before you start digging you may want to remove your toilet to get a look inside. A local can remove and replace the toilet in an hour or so - cost 500 baht if you an't do it yourself.

 

.

Go wash your mouth out!

we dont use "locals" on the diy forum because we know that they will make any promprem worse than it was before.

 

So we try to help each other, advise and coach so that we can resolve all our promprems on our own.

 

but you have a valid point, yes blockages need to be checked.

 

In fact I am just wondering if the OP actually checked the level of his inlet into his concrete rings. if the water is even 50% above the invert he will be experiencing promprems already.

 

[wpcoe]

18 hours ago, livram said:

 

 Before you start digging you may want to remove your toilet to get a look inside. A local can remove and replace the toilet in an hour or so - cost 500 baht if you an't do it yourself.

 

Or if your toilet is old you can buy a new one at Homepro starting at 2000 baht.

 In either case, supervise the placement of the toilet over the pipe and make sure that a wax ring ("donut") is used.  Often Thais don't use one when installing a toilet.  They just put an inch of sealant around the outside of the base of the toilet to seal in the liquid.  

[Issangeorge]

On the same subject, I have a toilet upstairs and one downstairs, they both drain into the same holding tanks, a series of concrete rings, for 12 years they seemed to work fine, and we got the tanks pumped out twice a year or so, usually a little less. A year ago January we had a party and the toilets have not worked right since. I have had the tanks pumped out five times since then. The last pump out I paid attention and the tank only seemed about half full. After each pump out the toilets seem to flush normally for about a week and then get progressively worse. The last pump out the toilets would flush, but not as they should. Now less than two months later, after every flush, they need to be plunged. Anybody have any suggestions how to fix this?

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[CGW]

3 hours ago, Issangeorge said:

 After each pump out the toilets seem to flush normally for about a week and then get progressively worse. The last pump out the toilets would flush, but not as they should. Now less than two months later, after every flush, they need to be plunged. Anybody have any suggestions how to fix this?

It has to be either air locking or lines are partially plugged? My wild guesstimate would be air!

Look at this picture below, does your toilet have a hole at the bottom, near the floor in roughly the same place, if so you will probably find it has been filled in, use a screwdriver and open up the hole again, then try flush, if it now works ok it is a air problem.

 

[livram]

The first thing to do is to go check your cesspit to see if it is full. A few hours of heavy rain plus the runoff from your room can fill up your cesspits very quickly. 

 

I just had the same exact thing happen to me this week. Emptied cesspits, then heavy rain that night and the toilet started to not flush properly. When I checked , the cesspits were filled to the point they covered the exit pipe so the toilet could not flush properly. At the end of the flush trapped air bubbled back into the toilet.

[grollies]

Run-off from your bathroom/showers, sinks should not go to the septic tank.

 

How does the septic tank fill with water? It should be a sealed unit, waste in from toilet, black water out.

 

If it can flood you really need to look at septic tank/cesspit design.

 

 

[Issangeorge]

 After each pump out the toilets seem to flush normally for about a week and then get progressively worse. The last pump out the toilets would flush, but not as they should. Now less than two months later, after every flush, they need to be plunged. Anybody have any suggestions how to fix this?

It has to be either air locking or lines are partially plugged? My wild guesstimate would be air!
Look at this picture below, does your toilet have a hole at the bottom, near the floor in roughly the same place, if so you will probably find it has been filled in, use a screwdriver and open up the hole again, then try flush, if it now works ok it is a air problem.
 


I could not find a hole like that anywhere. The upstairs toilet does flush, it does not over flow, but it does not flush fast enough to take a bowel movement with it. I have to use a plunger to flush a bowel movement.

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[Sophon]

9 hours ago, Issangeorge said:

It has to be either air locking or lines are partially plugged? My wild guesstimate would be air!
Look at this picture below, does your toilet have a hole at the bottom, near the floor in roughly the same place, if so you will probably find it has been filled in, use a screwdriver and open up the hole again, then try flush, if it now works ok it is a air problem.
 


I could not find a hole like that anywhere. The upstairs toilet does flush, it does not over flow, but it does not flush fast enough to take a bowel movement with it. I have to use a plunger to flush a bowel movement.

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I'm pretty sure that hole is for the mounting brackets and has nothing to do with the flushing.

 

If the water in your toilet bowl empties OK, but doesn't take the "solids" with it, then there is a very good chance that the small holes allowing the water to enter the bowl is blocked. If you look under the rim you will see a series of holes all around the rim where the water enters and creates the swirling motion of the water. If these holes are blocked by mineral deposits, the toilet will flush but not with enough force to clean out the bowl correctly.

 

If this is your problem, you can clean these the holes with a straightened wire hanger or some other tool such as a small screwdriver. But the deposits can be very hard to dislodge, so be careful not to damage your toilet.

 

Sophon

[CGW]

18 minutes ago, Sophon said:

I'm pretty sure that hole is for the mounting brackets and has nothing to do with the flushing.

We have one toilet that had similar problems to OP, after taking it off etc etc etc, I found that with this hole left open toilet flushed well, if I blocked it would not flush properly! If you put your finger over the hole you feel a rush of air coming out when flushing. (not ideal I know!)

Sure that the problem is that the line to the tank is not properly vented which I suspect is the same problem OP has?? To add a vent is not an easy job!

If the OP puts a water hose in the toilet and turns on full and everything drains ok it would prove there is no blockage and indicate a lack of venting?

[lopburi3]

The most common cause of poor flushing (other than material that should not be in bowel) I suspect is blockage of the air vent pipe and this often happens after flooding conditions where sewerage is backup up into pipe and dries there as water goes down and then does not allow air to vent.  But as said many homes here are only vented at septic tank so travel to tank can be very slow if using normal swish toilets - have found the Cotto wash down Serena 12027 model to work well in such a case (although not cheap).  

[Issangeorge]

Thanks for all the suggestions, it seems to have cleaned up on its own, but this has happened before, which makes the problem all that more perplexing.

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