There is a much simpler solution. Take a coat hanger, and cut the
curved top off. use the hanger to reach up under the rim and poke it
through the holes. Give it a good wiggle and move to the next. I had
to do this at my house, and it worked great.

dave



Eric Lee Green wrote:
In article , F/B Ehrhardt ruminated:
Hello,
My brother-in-law lives north of San Diego. One of his toilets
doesn't flush
"vigorously;" it won't empty out the solids. Yuk.

A plumber diagnosed the problem as partial clogging of the slots
just under
the rim, that direct water from the tank into the bowl. He chalked
this up
to urine (?) and/or minerals in the water.

Credible. I have seen this happen with the low-flush toilets in
particular,
in extremely hard-water areas.

What experience or credibility do you give to this theory? Have you
had to
replace a toilet for that reason? Is there a workaround that
someone quite
UN-handy could attempt?

Usual solution: 1) Turn off water to the toilet (generally a knob to
the bottom left of the toilet). 2) Flush toilet to empty tank. (And
verify that no more water will be coming in). 3) Holding the flapper
thing open, pour a whole gallon jug of vinegar down the hole at the
bottom of the toilet tank.

The vinegar *MAY* dissolve the mineral deposits. Or maybe not.

I've read where someone else thickened vinegar (perhaps with corn
starch)
and applied it into the holes using one of those little orthodontic
dental
brushes and a dentist's mirror (both of which you can get at a
drugstore).
No word on whether that succeeded.

If all your tricks with vinegar fail, it just may be too darned
clogged up
to save. Invest in a water softener, and *THEN* upgrade the toilet.
(Doing it the other way around will be a waste of money, because the
hard
water will just clog up the holes in the toilet again).

BTW, the reason the low-flush toilets are so succeptible to this
problem is because their holes are smaller in order to get better
velocity out of the smaller amount of water that they're given to
work
with. I've seen a 40 year old high-water-use toilet in a hard water
area that worked fine, and a 4 year old low-water-use toilet only a
half-block away where the holes were already too clogged to work
well.

--
Eric Lee Green EMAIL: WEB:
http://badtux.org
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except
Congress.
- Mark Twain