quick toilet tip

[Goalpost]

In this case, it was my parent's toilet. They are in their 80s, and my dad used to fix a lot of things, but it's tougher now. So sometimes I get the call.

Their toilet could flush, but the water filled the bowl, and then emptied real slow. Plunger really didn't help much. The water just filled, and several minutes later it eventually slowly drained down. My mom was just going to get another toilet, call a plumber, etc but I said let me look at it first.

I went on-line. I frequently do this to get info on a DIY

What I found was to fix.....Things needed were a bucket, some hot water, and some Palmolive. That's it.

So I poured some HOT water out of the bucket into the toilet. And the bowl filled up, and didn't drain fast, but slowly drained down. Since I didn't flush it, the bowl didn't refill, the water level just got to low eventually

I took out some Palmolive and sprayed about 6 to 8 ounces into it. Then filled another bucket of hot water, poured it in, and to my surprise, it drained much faster. I let it sit for about 15 minutes where the hot water and Palmolive could just settle in the toilet's apparent snake design in there. Then poured about 4 or 5 more buckets of hot water down it. I think what's going on is the Palmolive is slippery and the hot water is loosening things. Have some patience to let the hot water sit in there, between adding new buckets...but this works. No plumber called, no toilet replaced. Toilet flushes fine now.