Since purchasing our house we finally set everything up to rent the apartment at our house. Everything was set and cleaned and working nicely. Of course, that's when the toilet decided to give us some trouble.
The toilet valve leaks just enough to make it run almost constantly.
So being the handyman that I’m not, I opened up the tank to take a look. I’ve had to do a little work on toilets in the past, so it wasn’t a completely alien view to me. That being said, this toilet looked like it just fell from the International Space Station. What I was expecting to see was something called a “Flapper” a funky valve attached to a chain. What I found was some plunger looking device growing out of the hole to the toilet bowl with a lever attached to the handle of the toilet.
I went to the local hardware store and he gave me a flapper… He said this would do the job. It didn’t…
I went back to this hardware store but they were closed, so I went to another one armed with me trusty cellular phone equipped with my handy dandy camera. The guy looked at the picture on my tiny screen and scratched his balding head. "I don’t recognize that thing but let’s look", he mumbled as we weaved our way through aisle upon aisle of things I hope I’ll never need. We finally stopped in front of a ton of tubes and plastic things. He grunted and pointed and started scratching his head again. I looked around and suddenly saw the alien device that sat in the toilet tank. Would you believe it was called a toilet valve… Imagine that.. calling it something that it actually is… So I bought the thing and read through the directions and started scratching my head as well… (There must be something contagious about plumbing…)
The instructions told me to remove the tank from the bowl of the toilet. But of course never mentioned HOW to do this. Great…
So I went to my savior, the Internet. I quickly found what I needed and began to sob. Apparently hacksaws, tape and other utensils are also needed for this project which complicated the process even more..
Several expletives flew from my mouth as I ranted and raved for a while about toilets and those who manufacture them.
The likelihood of my getting this to work is next to nothing. I found out that it’s actually easier to install a brand new toilet than to install this piece of crap into the old piece of crap crapper!
My next step is to head out on the quest for a new toilet.
1 comment:
We've got one of those too. You have to jiggle the handle to get the water to stop running. We forgot to do this before going on vacation and the water bill that month was a nightmare.
Just don't skimp on the new shitter. A throne by any other name I say. Maybe you could install a DVD player and and a butt massage? That would be great and any tenant worth their salt would gladly pay extra for the convenience. God knows I would.
Maybe you could install a bedet(sp) too? I've seen one at Lowes that not only washed you goodies with hot water, but also can blow talcom power up your who-ha. Good gravy I want one of those...
Hope all is well with Liam and the rest of your clan.
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