Quote:
Originally Posted by Roy
I discovered a neat trick to help further empty the bowl. After
shutting off the water to tank and flushing, rapidly dump a gal jug of
water into the bowl, all at once if possible, and from several feet
above the bowl. Inertia of the falling jug water will remove even
more water, right down to jes above the water seal level, in my case.
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It's not the inertia of the falling water that's doing anything cuz any water that falls into the bowl then has to flow uphill over the weir in the toilet bowl to get out of the toilet bowl and down the toilet's drain pipe.
A toilet bowl is nothing more than a glorified syphon. You get a siphon hose going by sucking on the end of the hose to fill it with liquid. Once full, the laws of syphon physics take over and the syphon will flow by itself as long as the downstream end of the siphon hose is below the elevation of the liquid you're syphoning.
A toilet bowl works exactly the same way. The toilet tank's job is to pour enough water into the bowl fast enough so that the water flowing over the weir completely fills the winding discharge channel that ends at the wax seal. Once that winding discharge channel is full of water, the same laws of syphon physics take over, and that winding discharge channel becomes a 2 1/2 inch diameter syphon hose that sucks the toilet bowl dry.
If you ever hear anyone telling you that that discharge channel twists and turns because it somehow performs the same function as the P-trap under a sink, tell them they don't know what they're talking about. The discharge channel twists and turns so as to slow down the rate water can flow through it. Since water can only overflow the weir at a certain rate (depending on the tank and the bowl) the slower the water can flow THROUGH the discharge channel relative to how quickly it comes into the discharge channel, the greater the liklihood of filling that discharge channel completely with water, and thereby creating a powerful syphoning action.
Pouring that additional gallon of water into the bowl quickly simply starts another syphon going. That is, another flush, to remove a bit more water from the bowl. The inertia of the falling water doesn't have anything to do with it. You'd do better to put your hand into the bottom of the toilet bowl as the toilet is flushing to displace some water so that after the flush is complete, when you remove your hand, there will be one hand's worth of water volume less in the bottom of the bowl than there normally would be.