Subtleties of city sewerage, or What can not be thrown into the toilet?

Let’s talk about a not very appetizing, but very important topic – sewer blockages in our homes. The problem, alas, is not uncommon and usually directly depends on how residents treat the toilet. More precisely, what they throw at him.

At first glance – and for many residents, alas, this view persists for life – the toilet seems to be a kind of universal container for throwing out, if not everything, then a lot. It is clear that the sink has limitations: the drain hole is small. But the toilet, as it seems, the prospects are quite wide. As a result, things often fly there that for some reason we do not dare to throw in the trash can. Or we are too lazy to reach it. For example, semi-liquid leftover food. Half-eaten soup – well, it will be so embarrassing to drag it to the garbage chute or to the container site on the street! Or those hygiene items that we use in the bathroom – cotton pads, sticks … Why go to the kitchen to the trash can, if there is a porcelain friend nearby – so voluminous, reliable?

Meanwhile, the sewer system is proving to be quite sensitive. Much like our esophagus. And it must be treated with the utmost care.

The list of things not to throw down the toilet is quite impressive. He impressed me twice. First, such lists usually do not appear from scratch. Once it was compiled, it means that all this is really thrown into the toilets.

Allow me! Construction garbage? Stockings, tights, socks? Expired medicines and cosmetics? Diapers? God protect from such neighbors …

And secondly, to my surprise, I found in this list prohibitions that I myself did not know about. Tea brew, for example. Well, they taught in childhood: not into the sink, but into the toilet, into the toilet! It turns out – you can’t … It turns out that tea brewing tends to be compressed in pipes, forming blockages. The situation is similar with coffee grounds.

It seems that every object that cannot be thrown into the toilet, but which nevertheless turns up there, is worthy of a fascinating story. Let’s start, perhaps, just with welding.

Consequences of the conversation

This story happened in the editorial office of one of the city’s metropolitan newspapers. By that time I had worked there for six months. In the editorial office with enviable regularity – almost every month – the women’s toilet failed. The fact is that one of the employees took the fashion to pour the tea leaves into the sink. It is in the sink, not even in the toilet. Tea leaves were found there almost every day. Of course, on the third or fourth time the system could not stand it, there was a flood, and the toilet was closed for repairs.

And here we are with Yulia, a layout designer, with whom we quickly found a common language on the basis of World of Warcraft, and we are discussing another accident. We make assumptions: but at home, I wonder if she also throws tea leaves into the sink? Blazing with righteous anger, Julia asks how to find this radish?

“Well, it’s pretty easy to calculate,” I say lazily.

– How? – both Yulia and another lady who was nearby stared at me.

– Do you know a lot of people in the editorial office who use a teapot with tea leaves?

And I tell the story of how in the first month of working in a new place, I decided to show off and brought a kettle and normal tea leaves. But the work of a correspondent is such that you cannot sit in one place. Moreover, on Fridays, there were often some events after which it was pointless to return to the editorial office (as well as finish drinking tea and rinse out the kettle). In general, after the tea leaves in the teapot evolved into a flower bed for the third time within a month, I said: “Stop mocking!” and took the kettle home. And switched to sachets. As well as other correspondents of both sexes, whose jobs were on the right, on the left, in front, behind …

However, Yulia, spending all her working time in one place, and her comrades in the layout shop also drank tea from bags!

…I never found out who it was. She was lazy and did not move further than assumptions. But a strange thing: after this conversation, the bays in the women’s toilet completely stopped.

At that time, ordinary teapots were still in use. Now in everyday life there are often teapots with an inner flask – a metal mesh or faience, with holes. It seems that the invention of such kettles is a true boon for sewage. I took this flask, shook it into the trash can – and no problem for you!

So remember: even if you were taught as a child (as I was taught) that the contents of the kettle should be thrown into the toilet, forget it! It is better to get a kettle with a flask and shake it out in the trash.

Well, the sink should generally be taboo at the level of an unconditioned reflex.

It was a nice walk

In the list of what not to throw down the toilet, you can find the bashful “contraceptives.” This usually refers to condoms. The trouble with them is more interesting: they do not sink. And, besides the fact that they can cause clogging (latex does not decompose), they also serve as evidence … There is another story on this topic.

So, again, the editorial board of a printed organ, once of allied significance. At the time being described, it was a Russian-language newspaper in a small neighboring country. It was located in two apartments on the ground floor, the toilet was kept in only one of them, and for this reason it was in a unisex format – for a recent Soviet person, this is not quite a common thing.

And so on Sunday evening, the advertising department decided to organize a party in the editorial office for the most loyal and most generous advertisers. Sunday was a shortened working day, at two o’clock everyone dispersed, at five they began to buzz.

Monday morning. Proofreading comes to your work post. They were two ladies with a very great sense of their own dignity, no less stiffness and extreme touchiness. It was hard to believe that they even went to the toilet at all.

However, one of them made it through. And I saw it in the toilet. She, this “aristocrat” to the marrow of her bones, did not disdain, took it out and laid it on the table to the editor-in-chief.

The editor-in-chief also did not disdain and called the head of the advertising department to himself … I must say that a tall (more than two meters), broad-shouldered young man of more than twenty years old with a very gentle face, full lips and calf eyes behaved courageously and his passion, as befits gentleman, did not give out. He stood on the fact that “he needs to arrange his personal life” and that “not a single advertiser was harmed.”

Everyone in this story amazed me. An adult sexually mature stunner who did not know such simple things. But at the same time he was firm enough not to betray anyone. The primest lady who has stooped to digging not even in someone else’s underwear, but even worse. Well, so does the editor. Although I don’t know – maybe the leader needs to put his subordinates on the ears about this?

It seems that everyone who was on that Monday in the editorial office, firmly learned the rule: do not throw it into the closet!

How much paper can he take?

It seems that the toilet is supposed to swallow and digest paper – of course, not ordinary, but toilet paper. However, our good old Soviet sewerage did a good job with newsprint. Although, if my memory serves me right, then blockages in our house happened with enviable regularity.

Meanwhile, in all public toilets there is a formidable warning – do not throw paper into the toilet! And there is a special bucket. The question is: why? Why is it okay to throw toilet paper down a home toilet but not down a public toilet?

The point here is not the difference in sewerage – it, of course, is one and the same. It’s a matter of quantity. How many times a day do you go to your home toilet? And how many people a day pass through the toilet cubicle of a public catering establishment, a library, a cinema?

The second important factor is the piping system. It’s one thing if the toilet is installed in the apartment in close proximity to the vertical riser. And a completely different thing is a supermarket, where all systems are stacked compactly and the pipe can have many bends. Or the basement floor – there the pipe system also does not have a high “paper throughput”.

And then there’s the toilet paper…

In 2015, the comedy-educational series Adam Ruins Everything was released in America. Its protagonist and presenter, Adam Conover, is engaged in exposing everyday everyday things – ordinary for an American, of course – things. For us, this series is not particularly informative, except perhaps in the format of “their manners”, but you can learn something from it.

The sixth episode is devoted to our topic: “Adam spoils hygiene.” From it we learn that toilet paper was invented in 1883. By the way, this is not so: the first mention of toilet paper refers to China in the 4th century BC. The eternal habit of “civilized people” not to notice the inventions made by “wild Asians”. But even if limited to America, perforated rolls appeared in 1877. In the already mentioned year 1883, toilet paper acquired a central cardboard sleeve.

But back to the contents of the series. Adam says: around the middle of the 20th century, toilet paper sales – oh horror! – stop growing. After all, the average person has a limited number of trips to the toilet per day.

Capital, of course, for the sake of profit can commit any crime. However, manufacturers still did not dare to cultivate a cult of permanent diarrhea in society. They took a different path – they offered users wet toilet paper. And now – according to Adam – the process of cleansing after going to the toilet for an American looks like this: first ordinary toilet paper – then wet toilet paper – ordinary toilet paper as a finishing touch. Total consumption has tripled, and if you take into account the difference in price, then nine times in general (wet toilet paper costs three times more than regular paper)! Hooray?

Hooray, except for the fact that wet toilet paper – contrary to the sworn assurances of its developers – does not decompose in water as well as ordinary paper. You can learn some practical things from the series: Adam dips sheets of ordinary toilet paper and wet into water and demonstrates the result – the first quickly spreads into mush, the second remains intact for quite a long time.

And then we learn that in the last ten years, huge fatbergs have been found in underground sewers. This word, which entered the Russian language ten years ago, is a tracing paper from fatberg.

There is a kind of lexical cabbage here, a word made up of different languages. In this case, berg is from the German “mountain” (everyone knows iceberg, an ice mountain). But fat is a word already from the English language. It is translated as “fat”, “fat”, “lard”. If the Germans had been the first to discover fatbergs, they would have called it der Speckberg, or das Fettberg. But the first to discover this sewer phenomenon were the British, or rather, the Londoners. Why they didn’t call it, say, fatmount, why they crossed their English fat with a German mountain is an open question. After all, it also turned out to be easier for us to say “fatberg”, and not “mountain of fat”.

The main culprit in the formation of fatbergs is disposable wet wipes. They get stuck in the pipes, then a layer of fat begins to quickly grow on them. However, cotton pads, sticks, needles, the same condoms can also participate in the process. Fatberg, found in 2017 in London, is considered a record. Its length is 250 meters, and its weight is over 130 tons. It has been removed for over 3 weeks.

A separate topic is toilet paper sleeves. There is an iron rule: they can not be thrown into the toilet. The same invention of 1883 is made of very thick cardboard. Of course, it dissolves in water, but very slowly.

However, there is a company that boasts of inventing an exceptional water-soluble sleeve. From this invention, however, came a complete confusion. Now there are sleeves that say “just flush me down the toilet,” there are sleeves that say “do not flush!” And there are sleeves that say nothing at all. In addition, in the spring of 2022, it was reported that the French company, which owns the patent for the Aquatube technology, broke off relations with Russian partners, and now that washable sleeve has become indelible. So just in case – do not wash anything.

By the way, finally – a useful tip: it is convenient to store wires in these bushings. If you have a bunch of wires and they get tangled up all the time, try folding them into these cardboard grommets.

And take care of the toilet! Sewer clogging is an unpleasant and foul-smelling business (in every sense).

Yana MAYEVSKAYA.