Adventures in Plumbing, Part 2

Last time, it was the drain connection for the kitchen sink; this time, it was the toilet.

More specifically, it was the connection between the toilet tank (that holds the water supply) and the bowl (where the water drains to). Not as bad of a problem, and certainly not as smelly to fix. The clean up? That was a bit more irritating.

I knew the connection needed something, as one of the bolts holding the tank onto the bowl started dripping a few months back. Didn't think that much of it, though, as it stopped. Then started, then stopped, and finally Mother and I decided it was just condensation, and ignored the issue. Which was a mistake.

I was alerted to the problem yesterday when I went downstairs to do some laundry, and saw the trail of water coming out of my Dad's workshop. Which was odd, as we'd not had any rain the night before, so there was no reason for there to be any water there. Saw the huge puddle, and saw it was coming from the ceiling, did a few calculations, and figured it was the toilet. So I went back upstairs, and sure enough the one bolt was dripping again. Rapidly. I wiped up the floor, put a large plastic container under the drip, called Mom to have her pick up some new bolts on her way home (she expressed that it might be the wax ring), and went downstairs to clean up Dad's workshop.

Unfortunately, the area that was getting wet was right where Dad keeps his sandpaper stock. Most of it was salvageable, as far as I could tell, but I had to chuck the coarser stuff. The belts he kept there only got mildly damp, so they should be okay (I hope). I was able to mop up most of the water, and had to move some of his tools away from the damp, but I don't think the tools themselves got wet. Still, I put a small fan aimed at the wet ceiling to get the floor boards dried a bit. Needless to say, I put plastic containers and coffee cans to catch the drippings, and towels went into the wash first.

Then I went back to what I was doing, which was trying to find my head so I can get ready for a conventions we're leaving for in 2 days.

When I went back downstairs to change the loads, both the puddle and the trail of water were back. The ceiling was dripping more than ever, so I went back upstairs, and found that it was dripping from the other side too, now. Rapidly. I had some difficultly fitting a container on that side to catch the water, as it's so close to the wall and that's where the water connection is, but I managed to do it finally, using a funnel, with a towel to keep the funnel from falling backwards into the container.

I did not turn off the water supply, though, as this was not something I wanted to tackle on my own, and Dad was home and would most likely need to use the toilet at some point. I waiting with that until Mother got home with the news parts. The repairs was fairly simple, if a bit time consuming.

We turned off the water and flushed the toilet, to get the water out of the tank, disconnected the supply hose, used a towel to mop up the rest of the water, then used a slotted screwdriver and a wrench to get the bolt loose. This was a bit on the difficult side, since they were rusted pretty badly. We actually took the slot off of one, as the bolt head broke when we used the screwdriver on it. That one, we used a wrench to loosen the nut that held the bolt on the bottom. Tried taking the screws out then, but they wouldn't budge, so went on to remove all of them, and took the tank off, to discover there were more nuts, between the tank and the bowl, to hold the screws and rubber washers inside the tank in place. Took those off, then went about cleaning. Rather, Mother took those off, while I cleaned.

If you haven't changed these bolts recently, or haven't had reason to remove the tank, the underside can get very mildewy and gross. We used a Mr.Clean bathroom spritz on it, which worked fairly well. Actually, it turned out it wasn't the bolts at all.

Connecting the toilet tank to the toilet bowl, there is a large rubber stopper to keep water from dripping in the connection. This was partially dissolved from being in contact with the water for so many years, so this needed replacing too, and was the main source of the water. Luckily, the kit Mother picked up contained a new one of these, along with the new bolts, so it was a fairly simple matter. We followed the instructions, being careful not to over-tighten anything, and got the toilet put together in fairly short order. Which is to say, about two hours.

Though apparently we didn't tighten them quite enough. I woke up to Mother telling me the back bolt (there's three, one on either side and one in the back middle) was dripping. She'd put a container under it, but would I please tighten it up while she's at work? She thought I might have to drain the tank again and tackle it closer to the tank, as the nut probably wasn't tight enough. In this case, I dislike it when she's right; I tightened it on the bottom a bit, then concluded that she was right - it had to be the upper nut, because tightening the lower one wasn't doing any good. So, went through the whole fiasco of emptying the tank again, and this time used a wrench to tighten the between nuts a bit (the instructions said only to hand tighten them, but this was apparently not quite tight enough). Got everything put back together, and it seems to be fine. Granted, I have a plastic container behind the toilet, just to be sure, but it seems to be fine.

The worse part about the whole process was the mildew. Since it was the tank we were dealing with, except for a bit of rust (some of which comes from the water itself, given the content), the water was fairly clean. It certainly went faster, cost less, and smelled better then the repair to the kitchen drain!