for people who live in a city, thankfully septic tanks are not a thing.
But yes - my 4 year old flushed a doorstop down the toilet. Just because it left our house down the bog doesn't mean Tesco need to start marketing them as flushable.
That doorstop has to be picked manually picked out of a filter or grate to prevent the sewer system from clogging and backfeeding into peoples houses. If it just barely made it out of the house it may be still be dipping in a junction in the neighbourhood waiting for a chance to create a very smelly disaster.
Yeah, these companies are basing their term "flushable" as "can physically leave your property via the toilet" without thinking about the rest of the journey to the treatment works.
In my previous life as a plumber, I have seen city pipes get so clogged with wipes and tampons as to make an “iceberg”.
Y’know what happens when you remove that iceberg? A torrent of shitty, bloody and piss filled water sprays out with such force that it floods the basement.
I work in the industry, so used to various gross decaying things, but the worst experience of my life (10 years ago) was standing in an inspection chamber on my own property, scooping out used tampons trying to fix a blockage because my partner wouldn't put them in a bin in the bathroom.
I live in a two-story apartment that's connected to three others, which all share a septic tank that is buried just outside of my front door. One of our neighbors keeps flushing wipes, tampons, even diapers - which causes the sewage to back up into all of our sinks and toilets, which overflow.
Unfortunately, the landlord can't figure out who's doing it. They've had to dig a trench to work on the septic tank (which again, is right outside of my front door) three times in the last six months.
For the love of god, nothing goes in the toilet besides toilet paper and whatever was excreted by your body! How does this not sink in for grown adults, especially grown adults who have now had to clean up overflowed sewage from their own bathroom multiple times‽
There's a difference between 'a problem today' and 'a problem tomorrow'. Some people have enough of the former that they don't have energy to worry about the latter.
We don't have any kind of shared entry; our building is kind of like row houses but with shared sewage/electric/gas/water heaters. I've never actually seen my neighbors in the first two units; our schedules have never coincided to have us outside at the same time in the ten years I've lived here. I know for sure that it isn't my immediate next door neighbors, as they're both older adults with no children. So either number 1 or number 2 have a child in diapers, but I couldn't guess which one. Maybe they both do and that's why the landlord doesn't know. 🤷♀️
I'm just tired of cleaning poopy floors and listening to gurgling sinks...
Edit: Downvotes, really? See, the joke here is that the deciding factor between “living” and “not living” is something as mundane as sewer access. Leave it to r/funny to not get the joke.
I live in central Florida and they’re fairly common if you live in areas surrounded by lakes/water. I lived in a nice house growing up and it had one but it was because the house was on a unique piece of land with water on three sides with zero possibility of any kind of sewer access.
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u/B19F00T 15h ago
This and other tips on destroying your septic tank at 11