A chain restaurant calls and says one of the urinals in the men’s bathroom has overflowed onto the floor.

You stop by the supply house and grab some descaler before heading out. You find “wet floor” stands in the restroom, an out-of-order sign on the door, a large plastic trash bag draped over the urinal, and the famous “Do Not Use” sign hanging on the wall above.

You remove the bag and pour some descaler down the drain. Strange things seem to be happening to the water in the urinal. There are a series of bubbles, swirls, color combinations and a little white smoke. You wait 10 minutes and try to flush the urinal. It backs up again. You now have a clogged urinal and descaling chemicals all over the floor.

Now what?

Talk to any service plumber and ask them what part of their job they hate dealing with the most. You will often get two answers:
sewage pumps and urinals.

Urinals are a pain for three reasons. First, urine dries into calcium deposits that rival the hardness of cement inside of pipes. Second, any diminishment of flow through the very tiny trap-way and internal parts of the fixture will cause a slow drain or backup. Third, servicing a urinal often requires hazardous chemicals, a messy multi-step process for fixture removal and a fistfight for reinstallation.

Instead of becoming fixated on one specific thing happening with a urinal clog, look at all urinal issues as a restoration of the whole system. Don’t think of it as an individual component repair. Service techs will often get fixated on solving one specific problem and not detach and see the bigger picture. Have you ever watched one of the TV shows where they restore old vehicles? It would be best if you looked at a urinal the same way. This is a restoration process of the system, not a single component repair.

One of the biggest mistakes is starting by pouring descaler down the drain and leaving to go to your next call, hoping that the magic juice you put down will eventually chew its way through the calcium. Instead, look at the descaler as part of the restoration process, not as the fix-all.

Start by making sure you get a positive shutoff on the water and stop control of the flushometer. Once you verify that the water is off by test-flushing the unit dry, remove the flushometer from the control stop and the urinal spud. Next, you want to limit the mess coming your way. Lay down a few tarps, put an out-of-order sign on the main restroom door, keep a few empty buckets handy to catch debris and waste, and keep a shop vac nearby as well. The key to getting this done quickly and efficiently is going slow and keeping everything under control and as clean as possible. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Now loosen the bolts that are holding the urinal to the wall. If the urinal is small and manageable, you will be OK doing this yourself. Just understand that there are different types of wall bracket systems depending on the age of the urinal. Some old wall-mounted urinals have four bolts; some have two. Some have one long bracket near the upper third of the urinal; some have two smaller brackets. Make sure you don’t pick the urinal up off the brackets as you loosen the flange bolts.

Once you have the urinal off the wall, I suggest taking it outside, finding a safe place out of everyone’s way and trying to soak some descaler into the trap. Let it soak for as long as possible. While you are doing this, it is time to snake the urinal drain. Again, make sure you take your time and inch the snake into and out of the drain, trying to knock as many calcium deposits as possible loose.

An excellent way to test that the drain is clear is to make a urinal flange attachment using another urinal flange. Take an additional urinal flange, glue a 90-degree street elbow into the glue end, come up about 6 inches with a piece of pipe and glue a 4-by-2 reducer to make a funnel. Now, mate your contraption’s mating service to the wall-mounted urinal flange using the urinal gasket and bolts. Tighten just enough to compress the gasket, and now you can do a controlled test of the drainage system. Once you are confident that the drain is taking water, you can safely introduce a descaler into the drain system and allow it to soak for a while.

After you have successfully descaled the urinal and its drainage system and any flush ports of the urinal, you can remount the urinal and test. It should also be noted that it might be a good idea to replace the flushometer at this time. Restaurants are famous for having rough patrons and employees who will punch, chop, kick and otherwise abuse the system. Add this along with the improper rough-in practices that are all too common, and you have a high chance of leaking joints during reassembly.

About the Author

Anthony Pacilla is a registered master plumber for McVehil Plumbing in Washington, Pennsylvania. He has over two decades of experience in the plumbing and HVAC trades, and has a bachelor’s in business and economics from Thiel College.