Six Mistakes To Avoid When A Toilet Is Backed Up In Your Home
It's important that you react properly to a toilet backup in your home to minimize the resulting inconvenience and damage. Unfortunately, homeowners sometimes make mistakes when they experience a toilet backup that end up making the problem worse.
The following are six mistakes to avoid when a toilet is back up in your home.
Trying to fix the problem yourself
If you have a backed-up toilet in your home, it's essential that you get it fixed professionally. A backed-up toilet can cause a lot of damage if you don't get it fixed properly. Also, you could end up doing damage to your toilet and plumbing system if you try to fix a backup without the necessary equipment and expertise.
Waiting before you contact a toilet backup repair service
Don't procrastinate about getting your toilet fixed when it's backed up. If you wait to contact a backup repair service, the problem is likely to get worse. It's best to take care of toilet backup issues right away.
Failing to notify everyone in your home about a toilet backup
You should tell others who you live with that your toilet is backed up. If those who share your home are not aware of the problem, they might unknowingly use the affected toilet and cause it to overflow.
Not turning off the water supply
When you're dealing with a severely backed-up toilet, it's best to cut off the water supply to the toilet. This way, you know that the toilet can't start overflowing. There should be a valve at the bottom of your toilet that you can simply turn to shut off the water supply to the entire fixture.
Allowing water to accumulate on the floor
It's essential that you get water up off your floor right away if a backed-up toilet overflows onto your bathroom floor. Standing water in your bathroom can cause costly water damage that's difficult to repair if it is not removed promptly.
Assuming other plumbing fixtures have not been affected
Depending on the design of your home's plumbing system, pipes might connect your toilet to other plumbing fixtures to your home so that a toilet backup could cause other fixtures to overflow.
It's best if you know where the main shutoff valve is for your entire home. This way, you can shut off the water supply to all of your plumbing fixtures at once if other plumbing fixtures in your home start to overflow.