Martha Stewart went looking for the right way to plunge a toilet, which sounds settled until you watch it done wrong. The magazine asked four plumbers, and Travis Hargrave of Hargrave’s Plumbing was one of them. The piece ran September 6, 2026 under the headline “How to Properly Plunge a Toilet, According to Plumbers,” written by Rae Ford.
Travis got two questions: the plunger itself, and when to stop using it. Here is the method, plus what his warning signs mean around Lafayette.
Start by Throwing Out the Pink One
Before technique, the tool. “Don’t get the forced cap plungers,” Travis told Martha Stewart. “These are the old school plungers with the pink rubber.” They were built for flat surfaces, not the curve at the bottom of a bowl, so they stick in a flipped position. “When they pop back, it splatters everywhere,” he said. “They’re pushing power way lower than other modern models.”
Everyone owns one anyway: it is the cheap one on the shelf. Palmer Corvin, a plumbing field supervisor at Allen’s Air Conditioning, Heating and Plumbing, pointed readers to an accordion style plunger instead. John Akhoian, founder of Rooter Hero Plumbing, would skip the plunger for a toilet auger, which reaches the clog without stressing the wax ring.
Set the Room Up First
Akhoian’s advice on limiting the mess is the part everybody skips: clear the floor, put towels down, get gloves on. Corvin said to wait until the bowl drops to about half full, since a full bowl and a hard push send water over the rim. And do not flush again to check.
The Method
- Leave enough water to submerge the plunger head. Jordan Benjamin of Done Rite Services said that without it you are pumping air.
- Put the plunger in at roughly a 45 degree angle so it fills with water instead of trapping air.
- Seat the flange squarely over the drain opening, no rubber folded over.
- Make the first push gentle. It clears the last of the air and sets the seal. Benjamin’s tell is resistance on the first pull back up.
- Then work it about thirty seconds, firm but not violent. Akhoian warned that aggressive plunging can damage the seal at the floor.
- If five minutes of careful plunging has not moved the water, stop. Corvin’s read: you are about to flood the room, or the clog sits deeper than a plunger reaches.
Three Signs to Put the Plunger Down
The last section is where Travis had the most to say. All three signs mean the clog is not the whole story.
Water is rising toward the top of the bowl. “Something is keeping the water from shutting off,” Travis explained, “and that is dangerous.” A clogged toilet fills and stops. One that keeps filling has a second failure stacked on the clog and nowhere to put the water but your floor. Shut off the valve behind it.
The smell hangs around after the clog is gone. Travis told the magazine that odors lasting past the fix point to a toilet that is not sealing, or to trouble further down the piping. That is sewer gas getting past a seal that should be holding it.
Water is showing up at the floor. That usually means the wax or foam ring is no longer sealed and has to be redone, a straightforward toilet repair and the good outcome. The other one is what Travis flagged next: “It also can mean that water is building up in the sewer line itself and there may be roots or breaks in the line,” he said.
Around Here, It Is Usually the Sewer Line
In Acadiana that is the common answer, not the rare one. A toilet that clogs every few weeks, or weeps at the base no matter how many rings go in, is reporting on the line under the slab. Old cast iron rusts from the inside until the opening is half what it was, clay joints separate and let roots in, and plenty of mature trees here sit on a sewer line. Our soil moves too, settling a straight line into a belly that holds waste.
Akhoian made the same point: a chronic clog is a reason to ask for a drain line inspection, and a service call usually costs less than the damage it heads off. A sewer camera inspection puts a picture on the screen instead of a guess, and most end in drain cleaning or a spot repair.
Thanks to Martha Stewart
Thanks to Rae Ford and the Martha Stewart team for including Travis, and for treating plunging as a skill with a right way to do it. The full article is at Martha Stewart.
Toilet Still Not Draining? Call Hargrave’s
If you plunged it properly and the water is still sitting there, or it cleared and came back a week later, the problem is past what a plunger can fix. Our team pulls toilets, resets rings, and runs sewer cameras across Acadiana. Get in touch and we will send someone out.
