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Last Updated: , Created: Saturday, October 6th, 2001

When I flush the toilet, water squirts up and onto the floor.

Janice from Clarenville, Newfoundland has a toilet that has a mind of its own. Setting aside the possibility that it is not a toilet at all but rather one of those strange European bidets, my best guess on this one is a partial blockage that is interfering with one of the jets of water that serve to create the siphon flow that eventually sucks everything out of the toilet.

If you look at the graphic you will see two places where I have drawn red lines showing where the initial flow of water squirts up inside the trap and another that squirts across the bottom of the bowl towards the trap. It is all much clearer if you watch me drawing on the TV show, but even on the still graphic you can see how these streams of water start the water going down the drain. If there is a small blockage at the entrance to the trap that can deviate the flow from across the bowl bottom, it could be deviated up and onto the floor as soon as the mass of water passes by but before the tank is empty.

What you need to do is get a "closet auger" as shown in the drawing and make sure that the whole trap, and especially the entrance to the trap, is clear and clean. That should stop the spraying onto the floor.


Keywords: Cleaning, Leaking, Water, Toilets, Drains, Plumbing

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