While we were gone to Utah and Chris was in Germany, LONG before we left for the Oregon Coast, the toilet in the master bathroom started talking. It was just an occasional gurgle at first, but it soon grew to a constant gurgle and then a gurgle followed by a whoosh and then a whoosh whenever you turned on ANY water in the house.
Strange how quickly it got out of hand, really, because we kept MEANING to do something about it, but toilets aren't really in the realm of rocket science(no, really), so Chris was a little intimidated. And I can give birth naturally and run 11 miles (look at me brag), but I was worried that my plumbing efforts would leak into the dry wall.
So Chris's Dad looked at it last Saturday and said it looked like an easy fix and confirmed my suspicion that it was the somewhat decaying red thing around the main flush thing. He suggested that we kind of rub around the red thing to get it to seal properly. I did that. And then I took a shower. But it made the gurgling WORSE!
Anyway, today I'd had it. The sound was so regular that it felt like the house was snoring. I wrote down the type of toilet we have and all the other mumbity jumbo inside the tank (because, like cars, apparently toilets can be distinguished by something other than color--amazing) and then I went to Home Depot to get a new valve seal. Well, first I had to learn that was the name of the red thing, but once I was in the right aisle, I found it without the salesman's help.
Then, (get this, it's too good) there were directions on the back of the package that labeled the rest of the parts in the toilet and gave step by step directions. Genius. The only problem was that I had to turn the water off--something I've never done before. And when they did our home inspection, they couldn't find the main shut off valve, so I thought I'd have to go out to the street to turn off the water to the whole house.
Another road block.
But I'd gotten so far that I couldn't wait for Chris to come home or reach into the spider infested pit by the street by myself. So I googled "how to fix a toilet" and came up with this site that shows you how to turn off the water so the tank drains without turning off the water to the whole house (someone was really thinking here, huh?).
I drained the tank, unassembled the valve and replaced the old, deteriorating seal with a new one. I reassembled the valve and turned the water back on in the tank. Less than two minutes for the whole procedure. And only 1.68 for the valve seal. Guess what. The house is quiet. No running water. And no wet drywall either.
It makes me wonder what else I could do if I'd just let myself try. Oh, and Steph, I'm totally counting fix the toilet as one of my 26 new things I've done while I'm 26.
7 comments:
i am thoroughly impressed! i would really have to be brave to take on the toilet! i would so have hired someone and paid like $100 for it...what ambition! natural childbirth, was that an accident? whew, i'm hoping for all the drugs to work really well this time!
look at you go!!!!when there's a will, there's a way. no one come between a woman and running water, we don't want to do without it.
i didn't know you did natural childbirth?
Are we living a the same life? I totally had the same thing happen at my old house and you know Larry was not about to attempt a repair so I figured it out and replaces the red flapper and valve seal on my own too, although I would not be brave enough to try natural child birth!
Did I mention that it was Larry's fault that the toilet was broken in the first place because he hates cleaning toilets and bought those little disks you leave in your tank to keep it clean, but they are actually so strong they eat away some of the rubber and speedup the break down so it eventually happened to all three of our toilets. At least I knew what to do after the first one.
You're awesome! good work!
Dang Girl! You go!
Thanks for the inspiration! I just fixed the same problem on our toilet.
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