Sunday, April 15th, 2007
Daily Archive
My toilet tank runneth over
Posted by Office-Bob on 15 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: General Craziness
About a week and a half ago, my wife found water on the floor of the downstairs bathroom. When I checked it out, I discovered that the fill assembly - where the tank refills after you flush - appeared to be broken; water was spraying out of the top like a bidet on crack, and this was dripping out from underneath the tank lid.
The problem was made more challenging by the fact that I’d never had occasion to turn off the water valve to the toilet so it was stuck; I had to get a pair of pliers and use them to turn the handle until it loosened up. Finally, the water was off and I could drain the tank.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time during the week to buy a replacement part and we were heading to Norwescon that weekend, so I knew it would be a while before I would get the toilet fixed - we have a second bathroom so we weren’t in dire straits, but the downstairs bathroom was the only one with a fan.
You can guess how well that worked out. Thank goodness for matches.
I managed to finally make it to Home Despot where I found, to my delight, that you can buy a replacement kit for the feed valve on top of the tube…but my joy was short-lived when I got home and saw that the new kit was designed with 4 screws while the valve in the tank had 3.
Still, I’m not one to give up easily and I thought it might be possible to use the parts inside the kit while retaining the original housing, but this idea was soon put to rest when I started unscrewing the valve cover and the plastic, brittle from age (we’ve been in this house for about 15 years and we weren’t the first owners) and exposure to cold water, broke apart.
Some cursing, then back to HD to return the kit and purchase a complete feed assembly.
I installed the assembly and got ready to reattach the feed tube from the water valve to the tank, only to find that when I flexed the rigid tube to get it in position, it cracked right where it joined with the valve. There was one good piece of news, however - there was enough of the pipe sticking out from the neck of the valve that I was able to grab it with needle-nose pliers and remove it.
Another trip for parts, but this time I went to Rona because it was closer than HD. I bought a flexible feed tube which went in place just like it was supposed to.
Finally, it was time to turn the water back on…success! I have a working toilet with a new feed valve assembly and a new water feed hose.
Being the paranoid cautious person that I am, I’ve left a pan underneath the toilet tank just in case my plumbing efforts spring a leak; I have no reason to believe they will, but better safe than sorry (I remember one time my dad replaced a kitchen faucet and created a decorative waterfall - but that’s another story). Once I’m sure everything is working well, I will probably perform a pre-emptive strike on the upstairs toilet and replace the same parts there so I don’t have to worry about being a one-toilet household again, for a while at least.
After all, if a man’s home is his castle it stands to reason that you can never have too many thrones.
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