How to fix a toilet.

The BBQ Pit
21

The Toilet Smashing On The Floor Technique is definitely going in the manual.

My rule on toilet repair: screw it, buy a new toilet. You know it’s gonna end up that way, and then you get the primal pleasure of shattering the old one with a hammer. (Note: the trap WILL contain water. Doesn’t matter how you try to drain it, there will be water. It’s just a minor water demon that maintains the pathway for Chthulhu).

Plus, you only need to make one trip to the home supply store.

Number 13 is a handy rule. Sounds to me like the problem is solved. Just keep a nice bucket near the toilet, and when your wife complains, explain to her that you are apparently an anti-handyman- when you work on it, the toilet just becomes more primitive, so it’s probably best to live with it before you’re reduced to crappin in a hole in the dirt.

22

Well, I’m not going to celebrate because Murphy holds a special loathing for those with hubris, but it seems to be working. The repair kit came with new gaskets and washers and all that stuff, except for the water line because it’s not normally expected that the water line will fall off if you look at it funny. The old gaskets etc. were badly corrupted and must be ritually cleansed and buried, but the new ones seem to be doing their jobs. The new water line I bought is a modern flexible type, so if I ever have to go through this rigamarole again I shouldn’t have to worry about that aspect. And no, replacing all the parts was not a waste of time. The old fill valve was definitely failing; I bent the float bar which helped for a while, then it started running constantly again, then I bent the float bar some more, etc. So the final cost is as follows:

toilet repair kit: $20
toilet water line: $4
bottle of Advil: $8
satisfaction of fixing your own toilet: Priceless? Hell no! I’m gonna need physical and emotional therapy.
satisfaction of not paying highway robber-plumbers: Ok, that’s priceless.

23

‘Ia! Ia! Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!’
Sucka!! :stuck_out_tongue:

24

Good rant.

Fixing toilets is much easier if you have more than one, just like fixing a computer is much easier if you have a working one to look up the problem on the web. Am I comparing computers to toilets? Yes, one is filled with Windows, and the other is filled with …

Having toilets that spring leaks every couple of years means that you never have rusted parts. This is a big help.

Our pita toilet is one bought by the former owners that must have been remaindered or something. You’d think all toilet parts are standardized - you’d think wrong. The hole is slightly bigger than that covered by the bottom of the flapper. After nearly a year of working at it, with leaks which were worked around by shutting off the toilet between flushes, we finally got underwater caulking from a convenient plastics store and caulked the crap out of the hole.

I’d extend rule 2 to never try to fix anything on Sunday period, because by the time you find you need a part it will be evening, no matter when you start.

25

You don’t happen to be a plumber, do you?

26

I once fixed a toilet without injuring myself. It was slow flushing, so I read up on it on the internet. Following the instructions I read on the internet, I bought some serious acid, shut off the water, drained the tolilet by flushing it, poured in a whole bunch of acid, covered the top with saran wrap so I wouldn’t get killed by the toxic fumes, waited half an hour, flushed the acid and turned the water back on. That pretty much got rid of all the scale and build up and the toilet worked fine. It was even easy.

I was very proud of myself. It was a huge accomplishment.

I guess this means I’m a much better human being than Sturmhauke.
OWNED! FUCKING OWNED!
[sub]Of course, flushing the acid completely killed the septic tank, necessitating over $4,000 in repairs, so maybe I’m not all that cool after all.[/sub]

27

Scylla, my friend, you are the undisputed king of the unintended consequence. :smiley:

28

Shit, that’s nothing. Did you see what happened with the last pit thread I started?

Fuck me!

29

I smell a sig line…

30

We would, but you’re married and your wife can kick our ass!

31

Rule 14. Plumbing leads to more plumbing.

The drain pipes under my kitchen sink are held together by the remnants of an old coat hanger. I so wish that I was kidding.

My child got something stuck in the toilet. After about an hour of lodging the unknown obstruction deeper into the toilet, I finally called a plumber. He worked on it for an hour and finally removed the toilet to take back to his shop. On the way, it bounced out of the back of his truck and smashed into a million pieces. He bought me a new one and replaced it for FREE!!! I finally found an honest plumber but now he won’t return my calls when I need him.

32

Septic tank? That’s nothing. We have one. Don’t put anything you wouldn’t eat down the drain, never ever pour fat down, and once every five years have it professionally pumped.

My father works for a company that installs septic tanks. You don’t want to plant any shrubbery, trees, flowers, etc, over the drain field, and RidX? Bah. If you eat bread, there’s enough yeast going through your system (and the septic tank’s) to keep it percolating nicely. Besides, you wouldn’t eat RidX, would you? Didn’t think so.

33

All I needed to do was put in a new trap on a kitchen sink.

I ended up making up new swear words.

After much pain and suffering, it finally worked. But now the little sprayer thing hose was too short. Seems it was somehow wrapped around my repair job.

It stayed short.

Oh, God, how I hate plumbing projects. I feel your pain, Sturmhauke.

34

Pff. You didn’t actually fix the toilet, you just unclogged it. If your printer jams and you remove the stuck paper, that’s not really fixing the printer either.

[Nelson]Ha ha![/Nelson]

35

Good rant! The commentary in bold is a good format, I like it.

36

Excellent rant.
Reminds me of when I was 14 or 15, at which age much of my Saturday mornings consisted of handing him tools and being bored while he tackled one household repair or another.
This particular day, he was replacing the bungalow’s sole toilet. All went swimmingly until he announced that he would finish a perfect job with just one more quarter turn.
CRACK!
Then things literally went swimmingly until we got to the water shut off.
Dad taught me a few choice cuss words and on the drive home from the plumbing supply store, stopped off at a corner tavern on Belmont - just west of Crawford, N side of the street, Old Style sign - and bought me my first draft to go with his couple of boilermakers.
All in all, a pretty good day!
(P.S. - I hate plumbing!)

37

Is it a two-part toilet with a detachable tank? You might be able to unscrew the bolts and remove the tank first and just kind of ease it out from under the shelf.
My toilet repair story – there was a bit of leakage in the upstairs toilet so I decided to replace the wax seal. Not the most pleasant job in the world, but not difficult, * per se *. Turned off the fill valve, removed the toilet, replaced the seal and was gently lifting it back into place when I just * grazed * the fill valve with the base. Let me emphasize that, it was the merest touch. And suddenly water started fountaining up from the valve. Thinking that I’d accidentally opened the valve, I grabbed it and started turning madly until it dawned on me that the whole thing was loose in my hand. Dashed downstairs (through the kitchen where water was pouring from the ceiling) to the cellar and shut down the water. After removing a few square inches of flooring, a post mortem on the valve revealed that some previous plumber had used some kind of compression fitting on the valve which had corroded into unrecognizability. Had to solder a new valve into place and repair the floor, all as a consequence of replacing a stoopid $3.00 wax seal.

All told, though, I’m glad I found out how dodgy the valve was when I did – I would have hated to come home some day and find that it had failed and leaked all day.

38

Aw, hell, now you’re making me relive these nightmares…

WTF, it’s cheap therapy.

We’ve lived in a house built in 1904 for about fifteen years, so of course we have embarked upon several ‘home improvement’ projects.

One of the first ones was to try and replace some of our water piping. It was an entertaining and instructive mixture of copper, steel, and lead. And the water flowed like an old man’s.

First discovery: Apparently shutoff valves were rare and expensive in 1904, because there were two in our water supply system. TWO. The main one, and a second one leading to an unused sink on the second floor, essentially useless. So to work on any single part of the system we had to shut off water to the entire house,. thus putting practical time limits to any single project. As well as teaching us how to bucket flush.

Next, as I was tracing the water supply system, I found that once the water left the heater, the line proceeded north a few feet, then doglegged west under the primary beam, then bent south around the chimney foundation, then turned east a few more feet, to the vertical run… which was only a couple of feet south of the water heater in the first place. So our water would essentially go for a tour of the basement prior to actually heading for any fixtures. It’s like the plumbers would look for a left hand elbow, but could only find right hand elbows in their box.

Hey, toilets? I’ve replaced both toilets in our house, along with the piping and flange below. In both cases, I found the floors below to be rotten, hacked apart, and barely safe for looking at, let alone standing on, so before any toilet work even started, rebuilding the floors was necessary. And both bathrooms are too small for two workers, so setting a toilet is a solo performance. You have to be creative to get a toilet set right by yourself. At least I got to bust the old ones with a hammer.

When we needed a new Water Heater? Called a frickin plumber, and sat upstairs sipping a drink until he was done. Paid the bill gladly.

Let’s not even talk about the time the lateral got plugged. I still have nightmares.

You might as well just build your house over an Indian burial mound as install plumbing. It’s only asking for trouble.

39

Replacing an older toilet isn’t always a good idea here in the states. Thanks to some fricking whacked out toilet laws, newer toilets flush with the power of a five ytear old spitting down the drain, whereas the older style toilets flush withthe power of niagra falls.

Yeah, I know the older ones might have wasted a little water, but you know what? I can buy a figgin Hummer H2 whether I need it or not, I ought to be able to use a little extra water so that I don’t have to flush, plunge, flush all the damn time.

40

Have you read Dave Barry’s classic The Toilet Police?