Why can’t these goddamn toilets do their jobs right? All they do is flush piss and poopies down and they can’t do that right. Urine is not much of a problem but i hate it when poop won’t go down. Sometimes i have to flush three or more times or more because pieces will come popping up again. There’s nothing more annoying than waiting for the toilet tank to fill up so i can flush again. I wish they would install those toilets without water tanks everywhere. That would make my life so much easier.
NO damn You NO!
Gotta love those water saving tanks eh?
Maybe not, but it beats the horrified futility of watching the tide rise in a toilet that plugged up halfway through a flush. Nothing you can do but scramble around picking up the rugs and hoping for the best.
if you are using a ‘low-boy’ design:
these depend on water pressure to flush - the tank does not contain enough water to do a decent job by itself.
maybe talk to a local plumber re. what works in your area?
(the first unit I installed here was a ‘low-boy’. the second was a ‘high-boy’. lesson learned.)
That happened to me once, sadly whilst trying to get out of the smallest room in the house quickly to avoid being soaked I broke the door handle off and locked myself in with an overflowing toilet.
Not pretty. Not pretty at all.
Toilets have names that sound like Harley-Davidson motorcycle models?
Uh… why let it overflow? Lift the lid off the tank, push down the rubber flapper so that it doesn’t drain any more water into the tank. It’s fresh water in the tank, so it’s not like you have to stick your hand into the bowl…
You could even turn off the water supply to the toilet. It’d take longer, but most building codes require a valve on the water line feeding the toilet so it will always work.
None of you have ever flushed a toilet with the lid off the tank?
Oh SURE, it’s easy to play Mr. Cool-Headed Disaster Management Hero from the safety of your computer…but it’s a different story when you’re actually FACED with aquatic brown death.
And it doesn’t help if your SO insists on decorating every flat surface in the house - including the toilet tank lid - with breakable porcelain “collectable” crap. THERE’S a devil of a choice:
[ul]
[li] Swipe the mass of stuff off the tank lid in order to save the floor, and face the wrath of a pissed-off decorator-in-training, OR[/li][li] Save the rugs and spare the porcelain stuff at the expense of a thorough grossing-out.[/li][/ul]
Feh.
Thats all very well for you to say Mr FixWikkit but I can’t even fold flat cardboard to make a box let alone figure out how the inside bits of a toilet work.
OK, story time. 1995 or so, college. I was living in an apartment owned by my roommate’s family. 20th floor, mahattan.
FLUSH#1 - uh oh… water’s rising. Phew… it didn’t overflow, but barely.
“Uh, roommate, you got a plunger?” “Nope” “Ok…”
Wait for the water lever to subside, hoping the crap is somewhat softened.
FLUSH#2 - uh oh… here it comes again. Quick! open the lid, grab the float, and pull up, hoping to stop the water… SNAP!!!
uh oh… Float and attached lever came off in my hand, snapped at the point where it pushes the button to stop the flow of water. Water spraying up into the air. Crap starts pouring onto the floor.
“Shit!” (roommate laughs hysterically.)
I manage to catch some of the crap in a bucket, and hold the button down to stop the flow of water. I turn the knob on the wall to slow the flow of water, but it doesn’t turn all the way, so the water still trickles out. But I manage to get outside long enough to get a mop, a penny, and a piece of string.
By tying the penny to the button, and resting a detergent bottle on the penny, and resting the lid on the bottle, I manage to stop the water. I mop up the floor, put the bucket of crap in the bathtub, close the door, warn the roommate not to go inside, and head down to the doorman for a plunger.
They give me a snake. a fucking snake. Which does nothing. They don’t have a plunger, you see. I try to use the snake, but I haven’t a clue how to, so I just give it back, and call it a night.
Next morning, I head to the hardware store and get a plunger and a new float aparatus. I use the plunger.
FLUSH#3 - yay! everything went down! I pour in the bucket, and it goes down too.
Now I just have to fix the float thing. I lift the lid off my Macgyver’ed water stopping apparatus…
and watch in horror as I drop the lid into the tank. In slow motion, the porcelain lid drops through the water in the tank, and smashes into the bottom of the tank, cracking it.
“Shit!”
Water everywhere… again.
I run downstairs to ask them to turn off the water to my apartment. I realize I should’ve done this a long time ago. Maintenance rushes upstairs to stop the impending flood. Tells me, I should’ve called them a long time ago, and fixes everything for $140.
So, moral of the story… um… I dunno…
I guess don’t try messing around inside the tank when you’re in a panic?
You think a one-off flood is a problem? At least you can normally take a dump in comfort. You want to have a go on a German toilet - you don’t drop a log straight into the water, it hits a flat shelf that extends all the way from the back to within a few inches of the front, at which point the shelf drops off into a pitiful puddle of water.
First off, we have the problem of the brown snake’s stench not being contained by immediate plopping into watery oblivion - and so your hand must permanently hover over the flush in order to move on each chocolate roll as soon as it appears. So, that has already defeated the water-saving aim of these devices.
But that is nothing compared to what happens when you unleash a mighty turd - the Loch Ness Monster of bodily waste, say. No matter how many times you increasingly desperately flush, the evil thing will just sit there, smugly looking at you until you coax it off the ledge with a bog brush.
Ugh, give me a great British toilet any day. I want something that does the job when I do a job.
My current apartment has a low-flow model; I HATEHATEHATE it. Two apartments ago (I move a lot), I had one of those no-tank jobbers. That thing would flush an entire sheep at one go. As George Costanza once said, “Have you seen that thing flush? It’s like a jet engine!”
By the way, someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but…
(Italics mine.)
gonzoron, if I’m not mistaken, you want to push the float-ball DOWN to stop the flow of water. Pulling it up will stop the refilling of the tank, but will also keep the water already in the tank flowing lustily into the bowl.
And pushing the button down, of course, pulls the float-ball up, which… you get the picture.
Best would be to push the rubber flapper down, but pulling the float ball up will turn off the water. Then you’d have to push the rubber flapper down, and let go of the float ball.
Using HowStuffWorks.com’s terminology, pulling up on the filler float (here shown riding up the filler valve column as in newer mechanisms, usually a rubber or metal ball on a rod on older mechanisms) will shut off the water coming into the tank, but you’ll have to hold onto it or the water will start again. Pressing the ‘flush valve’ down will stop the water going into the bowl, which is what you want to accomplish.
The animation isn’t quite right, either.
You requoted the post and didn’t even mention “I manage to catch some of the crap in a bucket”, one of the greatest uses of symbolism in a parable about rampant consumerism I’ve ever seen.
Either that, or it’s just gross.
Wikkit, I would have made note of that, but I’m pretty sure it was utterly non-metaphorical, and thus I felt that drawing unnecessary attention might have been insensitive.
Hilarious; but insensitive.
We have this problem, and what we do is keep a large plastic glass (like an old Jurrassic Park one from McDonalds) filled with water on the sink. I pour the water in just as I’m flushing, and it ALWAYS goes down. No multiple flushings.
I keep it filled with water because 3 of my 4 cats have decided that the water tastes better (or something) from that cup than their water bowl. I guess because it’s always fresh, since I fill it up again immediately after pouring it in.
It’s embarrassing trying to explain to visitors what they have to do, but better that than have them be frustrated by our toilet.
Hah! I’ve got you beat. When my wife and I built our house, we made damn sure not to get the toilets with shelves. It only helps so much, though. THe damned things are still low flow, and are incapable of disposing of floaters on the first try.
Yes, german toilets really suck - an observation backed by fourteen years of life in Germany. God what I would give to have shitters like we had when I was a kid growing up in the U.S. Fair liked to have sucked the shit right out of your ass if you flushed while sitting.
Apotheosis,
this is the funniest sentence I’ve read on this BBS!
My gut’s still sore from all the laughing. 
Global Citizen
Yes, putting the flap down would have stopped the flow of water into the tank. But you must understand:
a) It was my first time examining the inner workings of a toilet. I saw the float (which usually floats) hanging downward, and my first thought was to put it back where it belongs.
b) in the words of apotheosis, AQUATIC BROWN DEATH!
(band name!)
The button I was referring to was the one which the float was connected to. Normally, the float is on a lever. The float goes up, the button goes down, and vice versa. Once the float and lever snapped off, the only way to stop the water was to push the button down. And since the button was very close to the fulcrum of the lever, it was designed to require a lot of force to push down. Hence, the penny/detergent/string/lid fiasco.
Yeah, I too gonzoron noticed the irony of the term “float”.
Similarly, it’s also associated with a “stool”.
What’s next… the handle’s called a “terd” or something