When you have to go to the bathroom, you have to go now – regardless of the circumstances. Should the unthinkable happen and the power goes out, can you still flush your toilet? What will happen if you flush with no power? I am actually very surprised to see this question online with minimal information to support it. I am here to help you figure this out.
Yes, you can flush the toilet during a power outage. Toilets do not require power to function. Toilets are functional due to gravity only. The sewer lines in your home and outside underground are all graded for water to run away from your home.
I can understand if someone just doesn’t know if a toilet will function properly when there is a power outage. I mean, if you don’t know, you don’t know, right? Luckily, it’s very easy to explain and understand – which I will do for you in this article.
Let’s begin!
How Does a Toilet Work?
First you need to have water running in your home and since you have a toilet, chances are you have water. Water is delivered from your city or town water supply at an average status pressure of 40psi to 70psi.
This means that as long as you have your water meter open to allow water into your home, there is a constant water pressure of approximately 40psi to 70psi. If you didn’t have the constant pressure, your toilets wouldn’t fill. Let’s move on to the next steps in this process.
- If you have a shut-off valve installed for your toilet, you can control the water from there. Once it is turned on, there is water pressure to your toilet tank which means your tank will automatically start to fill.
- Water enters your toilet tank via a fill valve. The fill valve allows water to enter the tank until a float connected to the fill valve raises enough in the water that it shuts off the water.
- Here comes the good part. When you flush your toilet using the handle or button, you are raising a flapper that is attached to the flush valve which is located in the center of the toilet tank.
- As the flapper is lifted upwards, water then rushes down an opening from the toilet tank to the toilet bowl.
- This is where gravity is taking over. The water enters the bowl which then whisks the contents of the bowl down the drain of the bowl into the sewer lines of your home.
- As mentioned previously, your sewer lines in your home are all graded downward slightly to direct the water out to the city/town sewer connection. There it mixes with all your neighbor’s sewage and carries on to a sewage treatment plant.
- Meanwhile, while all the draining is happening thanks to gravity, your bowl fills up and so does the toilet tank once the flapper settles back down and seals the opening to the bowl.
- Now the toilet tank fills all over again, ready for the next flush.
As you can see, no power is necessary as the water pressure coming into your home and gravity are what help a toilet function properly.
Can You Flush the Toilet with a Bucket of Water?
With water being delivered to your home under pressure, you usually don’t have to worry about ever having an issue flushing the toilet, unless something happens on the city’s end and the water gets turned off.
Regardless of the reason, can you flush a toilet with a bucket of water if you had to?
Yes, you can flush a toilet using a bucket of water. Because it is the water and gravity that cause a bowl to rid itself of the contents, using a bucket works as well.
What Happens if You Flush the Toilet When the Water is Turned Off?
If for some reason you flush your toilet and the shut-off valve is turned off, your toilet will still flush one time as long as the toilet tank is filled with water.
Once it flushes, the tank won’t be able to fill again because the water valve is turned off. This means if you flush the toilet a second time, it won’t work again.
You can either turn the shut off valve on or if you can fill a pail up with water from somewhere else do that and fill up the tank with that water. Then when you flush, the water will flow from the tank to the toilet flushing it.
Can You Take a Shower When the Power is Off?
I thought I would throw this related question into this article as it might be on your mind and there is something important to know when it comes to using warm water during a power outage.
If you tried to take a shower when the power was off, you would be fine for most of your shower as you are using heated water already existing in the hot water heater. Once that is used up however, you don’t have a way to heat up the cold water that fills the tank replacing the warm water just used up.
Most water heaters function because of power and or natural gas. Once one of those sources are taken away, the heat is also taken away.
If you have a solar power set-up, you could circumvent the power with that to ensure you always have heated water. Unless, of course, the natural gas stops working. We won’t worry about that at the moment, however.
Conclusion
Just to conclude this article, I want to reiterate that flushing a toilet is okay during a power outage.
Toilets flush because of gravity and the water sitting in the toilet tank. The water from a toilet tank can be substituted for a pail of water if you find yourself with no water pressure in the water lines.
Now that you know you can flush the toilet during a power outage, that is one less thing to worry about while you sit there in the dark!
Good luck!
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