Toilet Escapade

2005-03-15 at 9:39 p.m.

First, I need to give you a slight lession in toilet anatomy. This is pretty funny stuff (at least the names).

The thing that you move when you hit the handle of the toilet is called the flap.. its a rubber bit that lifts up to let water flow in the toilet bowl and falls down with gravity when the water level gets low. There is a air filled ball in the toilet that drops when the water level drops, which lifts the leaver inside a plastic pipe to let more water run into the toilet... when the water level has gone up, the ball goes back up, and stops the leaver. The ball and tube combination is called a ballcock. I'm not making it up. Go check out the plumber section of your home improvement store. It's REALLY called a ballcock.

Anyway, story:

Our toilet has had a slight leek for some time. The flap has not held up under the hard water so well, and is disolving. Everytime I've had to touch it to fix it, my fingers come away black.

My grandfather was a plumber. My vague memories of him an a non-threatening and sweet gentle guy convinced me that plumbing is not intimidating. (I also don't have a problem putting light fixtures in without gloves or turning the electricity off.) So I am the person in our house deemed to fix this.

Paul bought a new flap, and for the past 6 months its been sitting on the back of the toilet like a reprimand to my level of slackerness.

This week is spring break.

So I decided to quit being such a bum and fix it.

Monday I removed the lid, sat down, and replaced the flap. It was easy. Turn the water off, drain the toilet, pop the old one off (it actually crumbled off), pop the new one on, readjust the chain connecting the flap to the handle and turn the water back on.

Before I go any further, I'm telling you right now I did NOT touch the ballcock. Not once.

So I turn the water back on (and it rattles the whole house, Paul comes a running.)
And I wait for the tank to fill.
It does.
The water does not stop.
So I pull up on the ball (which should stop the water).
The water goes down the overflow tube.
I panic and turn the water off.

Then I have to repeat these antics twice for Paul.. and once more for myself.

Its apparent the ballcock is broken.

Crap.

So off to the home improvement store where we buy a new ballcock. This is when we learned it was called a ballcock. We thought it was so funny we called a couple of friends and told them. And when people came over later that night, we showed it to them.

It's still pretty funny, when you think about it.

Back on topic, last night we tried to install the new ballcock. Which says it uses no tools to replace.

But the old one needed tools to remove. We couldn't find the two tools we needed. Wrench and something that looks like a pincher.

So we went back to the home improvement store today and bought both of those.

We got home.
We replaced the ballcock.
We admired our work and grunted in happiness.
I even exclaimed "Now everything is new in our toilet and we won't have to replace anything for awhile!"

Paul turned the water back on.

And the tube that the water runs through from the wall to the ballcock broke. It's BROKEN. Duct tape isn't going to work on this sucker.

Guess where I'll be going tomorrow.

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