Whether you are enduring a long power outage, water restrictions, or a major plumbing repair, almost everyone has been caught in the unfortunate situation where you forget that the water is off and use the toilet anyway. As they say, if it is yellow, you can let it mellow, but what about when it is something more?

Fortunately, even if the water is turned off, the water held in the back of your toilet tank provides you one good flush that can help save someone some embarrassment. But what about when that last flush is already gone? All is not lost quite yet. The big secret to your modern toilet is that it doesn’t actually require pressure or even running water to function. If you have a random gallon of water on hand, it is possible to flush a toilet manually with very little effort.

With about a gallon of water, poured in the bowl slowly at first then more rapidly near the end, you can force any matter down the toilet without having to even pull the handle down. It works the same way as a flush, sweeping everything cleanly down the pipes.

The particularly nice thing about this manual flush method is that you don’t need to use fresh clean water to do it. You can have a bucket of water from the stream outside or pond in your yard on hand, if need be. It is all getting flushed anyway.

While you can’t always prepare thoroughly enough for power outages, if you have any plumbing work planned, you may want to keep a gallon of water or two on hand just in case the need should arise. If you are in the Columbia, Missouri area and find that your toilet is not flushing with running water or without, contact Brian Wear Plumbing today so we can flush out the problem.