Toilet

What Is Toilet Sewage and What’s Involved with Cleanup?

What Is Toilet Sewage?

Toilet sewage is the name for the hazardous liquid which backs up from the sewer into your toilet. It’s a mixture of water, human waste products, chemicals, and bacteria. If there’s a clog somewhere in the sewer line running from your house to the municipal sewer, water can’t flow through when you flush the toilet, and the pipes fill up. The sewage will usually surface at the lowest point of your plumbing first, such as in the bathtub or shower, and flow into the toilet next.

We can help with your toilet sewage cleanup! Call (877) 941-1640.

How Can I Tell If There Is a Blockage Causing Toilet Sewage?

There are several signs that you may have a toilet blockage:

Sometimes the water in the toilet will bubble or make a gurgling sound when you use the bathroom sink.
Waste, toilet paper, and water back up into your toilet as a brown, foul-smelling liquid.
When you run the washing machine, water gurgles out of your shower or bathtub drain.
You notice a sewage smell (an odor like rotten eggs or waste).
Sewage is draining from or standing in your sewage clean-out. (The sewage clean-out is a pipe outside your home which runs from the main sewer line to the ground’s surface and is covered with a cap. This is what plumbers often use to reach and remove blockages.)
The toilet frequently backs up or overflows despite numerous attempts with the plunger.

How Can Toilet Sewage Be Treated or Managed Over Time?

It depends on what’s causing the clog. If this is the first time it has happened, wait a few hours and flush the toilet again to see if the problem was only due to undissolved tissue. If the backup remains, and the toilet is the only utility which seems to be affected, it may be that the blockage is in the toilet itself. If you’ve already tried a plunger to no avail, you can try using a toilet auger. It’s similar to a drain snake, but an auger won’t scratch the porcelain.

If the toilet continues backing up after using the auger, the clog is most likely somewhere in your sewer line and you will need professional help. There are two types of sewer lines which run from your home: secondary lines, those being the pipes connected to your sinks, toilets, bathtubs, water-consuming appliances, etc., and the main sewer line to which they attach, which is the pipe feeding out to the sewer. The pros at Twin Home Experts have over 30 years of experience in finding and repairing sewer line blockages. While you’re waiting for help to arrive, don’t pour chemical drain cleaners down your toilet or drains in the hopes that it will dissolve the blockage. It won’t do much against a solid clog in your sewer line but may instead damage or corrode your pipes.

If the toilet sewage overflowed from the commode and into your bathroom, here are the steps to get it cleaned up safely:

- Keep people and pets away from the area until you’ve disinfected it.
- Open windows for ventilation and put on a face mask and gloves. Wear waterproof, rubber boots if the spill was severe enough that you have to stand in it.
- Bag solid waste and mop up all excess water, disposing of the mop head afterwards.
- Use bleach and hot water to thoroughly disinfect the area.
- If the sewage backup from your toilet is more severe (a large amount of wastewater is present, porous surfaces such as carpets or subfloors are damaged, sewage has traveled to other parts of the home, etc.) call a professional to assist with cleanup. Twin Home Experts has equipment to pump out wastewater safely and disinfect hard-to-reach areas.

Why Call Twin Home Experts for Toilet Sewage Cleanup?

We’ve been serving the area since 1982, bringing not only over three decades of experience to our customers, but the latest plumbing equipment. We’ll use a tiny, illuminated camera to locate clogs so that we can quickly eradicate them, and hydro-jetting (high pressure blasts of hot water) to fully clear out the inside of drains and pipes. With Twin Home Experts, your plumbing system will be restored in no time. For professional expertise and top-notch customer service, give us a call.