the other toilet

The other toilet got jealous and wanted new parts too. This weekend it was making dripping noises. Apparently the fill valve isn't shutting off and eventually the water level exceeds the overflow tube and it starts to drip down. I was later than usual to work Monday morning as I tried to rig the thing to still work and not fill continuously.

Monday evening I went and purchased all the parts (so I thought) to the toilet for replacement. Man, this one was a pain in the butt to work on. I had more problems than there is space here to enumerate. I'll only mention some here. The kicker was that I had the toilet put back together and went to install the new fill valve, only to find that a part that went with it is broken. I was disgusted. So okay, maybe I'll leave the project undone and go swap out the fill valve at the store tomorrow.

Except that I go use the other bathroom, flush, and the thing wouldn't fill. Apparently the inlet valve in the other bathroom feeds this bathroom too. For this one to work, I'd have to turn on the other valve. Ouch. That means I have to finish the job. Good thing the broken part doesn't keep the valve from working, it's just one of the hoses in the tank (but not just a simple hose).

So I go to finish the job. I was really tired and my back was hurting a little. I had purchased a new hose to go between the inlet and the tank, except that the nut was too small for the inlet. So I had to go dig the old pipe out of the trash to reinstall it. And here's the part I wanted to avoid: I had to saw approximately one inch off the pipe. I had to do that for the first toilet.

It's now past midnight and I'm on the garage floor sawing the pipe (I don't have a work bench). I've never changed the blade on the hacksaw since I purchased it eons ago. Just two years ago I had used the same blade to cut through a padlock during a hurricane evacuation when couldn't find the key to the padlock on the breaker box. Fatigue and dull blade makes for slow progress but I finally got it.

Toilet now works but there's a little leak. I needed, and had intended, to replace the gasket between the tank and the bowl. I thought the gasket would have come with the overflow/flush tube (or what ever it's called) but it didn't. I reinstalled the old one, but that's where it's leaking now. I'm just very happy that the leak isn't coming from UNDER the toilet. It only leaks when you flush, which makes sense.

The good news is that I won't have to disassemble to replace the broken part. I'll just take the broken hose back and ask if I can get a good one from another box. The new hose will simply push into the fill valve assembly. The slightly bad news is that I'd need to lift the tank from the bowl to replace that gasket--that's going to require some disassembly.