As you recall from yesterday a toilet was installed in my new house. And it drained right into my basement, which is a bad place for that kind of thing to end up. Again, the problem was a drain that had broken off, yadda yadda yadda. The real joy was when I realized that not only did my toilet fire it’s contents into my basement, but my toilet tank had a slight leak as well. How do you fix a leaky toilet tank? Well, step one is to empty the tank by turning off the water and flushing the toilet. Into the basement. *sigh*
Now, the previous owner had run up against one of my earlier problems; how do you attach a 2 inch pipe to a 4 inch pipe? The answer is adapters, and lots of them. My house is over a hundred years old, so it’s acquired some eccentricities over time. The plumbing is by no means the least of them, just the most currently pressing. But guess what happens when two pieces of metal that are kept damp, pretty much constantly, for a few decades? That’s right they become one piece of metal.
Fortune was on my side, this time. As I stood on a pipe desperately trying to undo years of corrosion I noted that the inside drain pipe was PVC. Enter the chisel and pry bar. A little aggression and a reused pvc endcap and my toilet drained into the river like all decent toilets.
Now I could get down to the fun of emptying out the toilet upstairs and sticking my hand in all of the water that wouldn’t drain out, because these things aren’t really meant to empty completely. Needless to say, this whole adventure was much less taxing than the basement situation. Although I did discover that I bought pretty much all new guts for the toilet when all I really needed was a new washer and nut. But now the inside of my toilet is all shiny and new. I’m thinking of leaving the lid off of the tank just so folks can admire it. But then I’m not sure where to hide the guns if I do that.
Tune in next time when I realize I have to go back to work this week and still don’t really know what I’m doing.
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