Here in our Arizona home, we have not just one, but 2 bathrooms - a big deal having grown up in a Midwest house with only one. And working at home, for me the rest room is just about 10 steps away - not down the hall and past the boss's office in a public lavatory. And living in Arizona, and having kicked my Diet Coke addiction (too much fake sweeteners confusing my pancreas & brain, too much bone leaching phosphoric acid, too much reflux) I drink alot of organic tea, and a glass of Britta filtered water along with it. So at least once an hour, I'm making a short trip to the home-office-adjacent hall bath.
Now, since this is Arizona, and it's the Sonoran desert, we try to conserve water as much as possible. Low flow wash machine, low flow showers, etc. And since getting rid of tea from one's lower renal tract doesn't require a large amount of flush-able toilet tank water, I've installed several large glasses to act as displacement cylinders inside the toilet tank, reducing the over-all volume of water discharged. Works great for #1, not always so great for #2, when lack of toilet tank flow leads to a stopped up toilet.
So, a logical person could use a plunger, and for almost 3 years, I occasionally DID use a plunger to create artificially high pressure above the blockage, and force it down into the sewer. But then this year, I realized, just let Bernoulli do the work. No more nasty plunging. Instead, I toggle the handle of the toilet tank, to get the bowl nearly full of water. Now, all that water has gravity acting upon it, and it wants to find the lowest point - but there's a blockage in the way. *
*Note: Gravity always works in the same direction - except for those who don't believe in evolution (since it is a theory, and gravity is a theory too, and their both part of nature), so if you're a fundamentalist Christian
[TM] you'll need to keep your plunger handy. This method won't work for you.
Now, given alot of time, and patience, the pressure of the water above the blockage, will gradually push down on the blockage at the bottom of the bowl, and the toilet will clear itself. But lots of people do not have time or patience. So, what you can do instead, is run water in an adjacent tub, or flush a 2nd toilet that shares the same sewer trunk line. The water rushing down the drain on the down-stream side of the blockage, will help to induce a lower pressure back there, urging the blockage (and the water in the toilet bowl pushing down on it also) to come join them in their journey to the waste treatment plant. No mechanical force necessary. Hands not dirtied using a plunger, no splashing or sloshing - it's an elegant leverage of science and logic over brute force, and I've employed this principle 3 times in the last month. Works sublimely0 well.
People think it's about "suction" in hydrodynamics, but "suction" is imaginary. There's simply areas of higher, and lower pressure, and they're all trying to get to equilibrium whenever they if they can. Nature abhors a vaccuum, and Bernoulli, back in the 16th century, proved it's all about differential pressure, long before anyone knew what molecules or friction were.
Yes, critics of this method might say "a properly vented toilet or tub would not share a common vent line to the roof, so your assumption is invalid" - but this is Arizona. The Home Depots have signs first in Spanish, and then in English. Subdivisions sprung up on reclaimed farm land 10 years ago faster than weeds without RoundU
p[TM] on a non-organic farm, and many homes were slapped together with inadequate plumbing vents - each roof penetration costs money and time you know! Also, many older homes, especially those in large urban areas like Chicago, NYC, SF, LA, etc, are possible not compliant with "current Universal Building Code" and could benefit from the same patient application of Bernoulli's principle, rending millions of plungers obsolete.
