I consider myself a modest number of talented things, but a handyman is not among them. This is somewhat odd given that I apparently possess enough mechanical know-how to score around the 90th percentile on the Bennett Mechanical Aptitude test whenever I take it. But while I know which direction a given gear will turn and how best to position a fulcrum, I’m largely worthless around the house. Whenever something breaks, my first response is to (1) take it apart, (2) hose it down with WD-40, and (3) bang the hell out of something with a hammer. That works in a surprising number of cases, but when it doesn’t my next step is usually to call a plumber, electrician, or contractor.
A few days ago, though, our toilet started running. Upon taking it apart (see step #1 above) I saw that one of the rubber seals had partially disintegrated. This is where I could have called a plummer, but rather than spending $150 on a $7 problem, I went to Home Depot and bought a toilet repair kit. When I got home, I searched for “Toilet Repair” on Google and found this:
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Pfft. Simple. I mean, I have a Ph.D. I can figure this out, right?
So I got my tool box and started taking things apart. Here’s something handy I learned: Turn OFF the water source before you get started. After I learned that lesson, things …um, escalated. I quickly found that to get to the one thing I wanted to replace, I’d have to take three other things apart so I could disassemble another thing so that I could reach the first thing. About 10 minutes later, this is what my toilet looked like:
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Yeah, this was a deeper foray into the realm of home repair than I expected, and at this point Ger was getting kind of worried. I think she had images of my banging on things with hammers and getting a torrent of water in the face while Lucy and Ethel ran around in the background stuffing chocolates down their shirts. I eventually had every piece of the toilet separated from every other possible piece, creating a porcelain jigsaw puzzle that I quickly lost track of.
Finally, though, I replaced the parts that needed it, including the one for which I had substituted a trash bag zip-tie a few weeks earlier. I reassembled the toilet, filled the tank, and flushed it.
You can probably guess what happened. Water. Everywhere. Squirting out of the toilet from some unknown orifice. I’m just glad I didn’t decide to go with a more shall we say “realistic” test of the toilet’s functions.
After a bit of mopping up and disassembling and refitting seals and reassembling, things were finally set right. It flushed with no leakage and I marched into the other room so I could announce to Geralyn that she was now able to flush her bodily waste with confidence. She just kind of rolled her eyes as she often does, but I was too high on my own handy self and came in here to write this post.
A few minutes after I started, Geralyn came in, a kind of “gee I hate to tell you this” look on her face. The toilet wasn’t leaking, but it was still running. It was, in other words, still doing that little annoying thing that had set me down this soggy path in the first place.
So, anyway. Anyone know a good plumber?
Dude – I’ve been there. But all I did was purchase the same $7 home depot kit (as well as that crazy superwide wrench), take apart the toilet – and put it back together again. It’s worked like a charm ever since.
You did get the crazy superwide wrench, right? 😉
I thought you just had to replace the flapper thingy. We had the same problem and that worked like a charm.
Anything more than that certainly requires a call to a plumber. Two things I don’t mess with are electricity and water!
The disassembling and reassembling went okay, with the only hitch being a collar I couldn’t unscrew to replace the broken seal. This is where the “hose it down with WD-40 and bang on it with a hammer” thing came into play and eventually payed off.
The problem, it turns out, wasn’t actually with the piece that I replaced at all. It was a valve in another part of the toilet entirely that had gotten misaligned. Once I discovered that, it took like 3 minutes to fix and required only a screwdriver. So all that work I did was completely worthless thanks to my “take it apart now, ask questions later” approach.
On the plus side, I now know how toilets work and the thing got a thorough cleaning while I was at it. Nothing motivates you to clean the toilet like having to get your face right down there in it.
I have a client whose favorite interview question is, “How does a toilet work?” He contends that it is the “perfect question” and you can tell everything you need to know about a person from their answer to this question.
-Are they curious (i.e., have they ever lifted the top and tried to understand the inner workings)?
-Are they mechanically inclined?
-Are they big picture type of people or detail oriented?
-Are they afraid to “get their hands dirty”
He had many more reasons for using this question but you get the point. So after your experience you will now be more prepared than ever to answer the perfect question.
Not a plumber, but educated enough to call one, but still hammer and wd 40 myself, then call one when its too late. I would ask where the leak is then duct tape that. Unlike Larry and Moe, I attack only the problem at hand (face). Bought two whole kits, but that didnt help, still a leak by the ballcock (sounds redundent) base. I see mention of a wrench, but my instructions said “hand-tighten only” in bold. I used a wrench and estimated torque pressure of a plumber since its relative. I got the same high, till I saw water the next day (slow leak). We blog since only those who have been there appreciate this accomplishment. Why the llama? How does the toilet question fit in this?