The toilet from hell.

If there is anything that could get a person blogging again, it's a toilet. After all, we have somewhat of an intimate relationship with them, and when they fail us it can be like a romance gone astray.


Toilets do, of course, fail with some regularity. No doubt everyone has taken the top off a tank now and then to get a toilet to flush or stop it from running. In an age when your telephone is also a computer and we're thinking of sending men to Mars, it's surprising that toilets aren't more reliable.


A few weeks ago the toilet in our master bathroom failed, for some reason. I went to Home Depot to buy the usual parts:

I could have spent $20 for the usual kit and have been done with it for another year, but I was entranced by new technology. Both the water inlet and shutoff device and the flush valve assemblies of this modern design were made by the same company, meant to work together. Instead of a float ball, the inlet device had a bobber around the inlet tube and several adjustment knobs. The flush valve assembly was entirely different. Best of all, you flushed by pressing one of two buttons: one for yellow, the other for brown. Not only would you save water, but flushing with buttons seemed entirely cool. So I eagerly shelled out $50, rushed home, and converted our old toilet into a space age pooper.


It almost worked. It took several adjustments, but eventually the "brown" button did an adequate flush. The "yellow" button, however, did not. As soon as you released that button, flushing would stop. It took a while to work out that the cable from the button was binding somehow. I tried and tried, but I couldn't route it so it wouldn't bind - our tank was just too small. I wrote to the company to ask for help, and they wanted to send a new unit, and they asked that I report after installing it. I guess they'd had other complaints. But by that time I'd decided that pushing buttons was too hard, anyway, so I declined the offer. I went back to Home Depot to get a standard flush valve device.


A few problems appeared immediately. The toilet tank is not only small, but the part where the flush lever goes through it is at a 45 degree angle. Getting the lift rod around the very modern and somewhat larger water inlet apparatus was not easy. Then there is this wooden thing over and around the toilet - shelves to hold TP and whatever. Very handy, but it is screwed to the wall, and it was so close to the toilet that a standard flush lever would not fit. Then there was the issue of the flapper, left over from the high tech device, and which was designed to save water.


I'd purchased a very nice flush lever assembly, but it hit the shelf thing. I went back to HD to get another, but I forgot to account for the 45 degree angle where it mounted. Finally I had the idea to install the nice assembly upside-down, so the lever pointed away from the shelf thing. That required lifting the lever instead of pressing it down to flush, but that was kind of cool. I bent the lift rod so it would fit.


Unfortunately, I soon learned that the flush was not strong enough for "brown". You had to flush twice to get even TP to go down. I figured out that the high tech flapper was the problem. It was attempting to save water. I went back to HD (a 20-minute drive, btw) and bought a standard flapper, but it didn't fit. To install it I'd have to replace the entire flush valve assembly, which would mean I'd have to take off the tank again. I didn't want to do that, so I removed the new flapper to check it out.


There is a valve at the bottom of the flapper that controls the rate at which water leaks out. I messed with that awhile, but without success. Finally I figured out how it works. (How a flapper works... life just keeps getting more complicated.) When the flapper is down, water leaks out from the bottom and it fills with air. When you lift it, air leaks out from a hole in the side, and when the air is gone the flapper goes down and stops the flush. It was going down too fast. I had to slow the rate at which air escapes.


Plugging a hole in plastic underwater poses some challenges. I tried pop rivets and this and that, and eventually used a machine screw, washer, and nut. That seemed to work.


It wasn't long, though, before we realized that the flush still was not strong enough. I discovered that the upside-down flush lever wasn't lifting the flapper high enough. I tried every possible adjustment, but the range of the lever was too limited. By this time I was getting really tired of having my head in the toilet tank. I took the lever off and into our garage, where I modified it on a grinding wheel. I ground the metal that limited the range to 1/4 of its size, and that was perfect! Finally the toilet was fixed!


Then our housecleaner came. She went into the bathroom and pressed down on the lever, but nothing happened. We'd forgotten to tell her to lift rather than press. So she pressed harder. And harder. Then the part I'd ground down broke off completely.


I wasn't having a good day anyway, but toilets are important. I went to Lowe's (30 minutes) instead of HD, and carefully selected a universal lever that would fit on our 45 degree tank. And it did, but it was too long and hit the shelf thingy. There was no way to install it upside-down. That was a final straw. I went out to the garage and got a saw and cut the shelf thing away so that the lever would fit. I don't think Twila noticed that yet, so this is my confession.


At least now, many hours and $75 later, the toilet is working. I've already resolved that if it breaks again, I'm either going to call a plumber or replace it with a new toilet. High-tech.