james t kirk

If there are any plumbers out there, your advice would be welcome.

I have a Kohler toilet that was purchased new in 97. It is installed in an older home, but with all new ABS drains (installed by me)

I ran the sanitary stack up from the basement to the 2'nd floor in a straight line, but then had to off-set the vent by about 3' rather than continuing straight up through the roof.

The problem is that the toilet doesn't seem to have enough power. Yes, it's a low flow, BUT, and this is important, it is not performing like it did when it was new. Originally it worked pretty good, but now, not so good. Just a small amount of TP is enough to stop it up. It drives me crazy.

It used to work just fine.

I emailed Kohler and they suggested using a lime away like CLR to clean out the holes under the rim. I followed their instructions to the T. First I reamed out the holes with a paper clip, then I used wet paper towel and plumber's putty to stop up holes and poured the CLR down the orafice in the tank and let it sit 24 hours.

No difference.

One odd thing i have noticed.

When i remove the tank lid and flush the thing, water shoots out the overflow pipe by about an inch initially until the water drains about 3" down in the the tank. This leads me to believe there is some sort of back pressure or something.

But the toilet in the basement (which isn't vented, rather hooked right to the stack) functions perfectly. The rest of the drains in the house work perfectly.

I have also noticed that water does not seem to shoot out of the jet at the bottom of the bowl the way it used to.

The other odd thing is that sometimes it is worse than other times. Sometimes it works OK, other times poorly, but never the way it used to.

I am almost thinking there is something trapped inside the bowl that is blocking the flow of water to the bowl jet. What i don't know.

Very weird.

Any advice?????