Flushing a toilet with a bucket of water is easy.
- Find a bucket or cooking pot, that will hold about 2 gallons of water or more, a five-gallon bucket will give you several flushes.
- Fill it up about 3/4 or so with water, the water can be rainwater, from a stream or a puddle of water. You can also use soapy wash water also known as “greywater”
- Slowly pour the water into the bowl raising the level to the top or until the toilet flushes, if you have a lot of material in the bowl you may need to get the water level to the rim before the unit flushes, if it did not flush you may need to get the plunger out because of excessive material in the bowl.
- After the flush is complete pour some more water into the bowl to the normal level. Keeping a normal level of water in the toilet bowl is important to keep any smells, or gases, from the sewer pipe entering the bathroom
Why does this little trick work?
The toilet works on the siphon principle. This is explained on the KOHLER support website much better than I can.
“The surge of water to the bowl quickly fills the trapway and displaces the air space within the trapway. The resulting change in pressure causes a siphon to be formed. Water and waste material are drawn through the trapway and out into the sanitary sewer line by the force of the siphon.”
This is a representation I created of the flow of material. After the flushing of the toilet, the water level forms a seal against sewer gasses flowing back into the room.
Why Does The Toilet Have Water In It All The Time
The toilet has water in it all the time because if it didn’t two things would happen.
- Sewer gasses from the main sewer line, or pipe, would come back up into the room. These sewer gases not only smell bad they could ignite because they might contain methane gas.
- Let’s say the water acts as a lubricant for the solids that are deposited into the bowl making them less likely to stick to the side and bottom to the toilet.
I would say both are bad and this is why it is important to leave water in the toilet bowl after you use a bucket to flush it.
I hope this information has been of some help and good luck.
Gary
1/24/2021