Homeowner toilet repair & Icewind the “Plumber”

Do you have any friends that won’t call on you when they need something repaired or fixed and they know that is what you do for a living or can at least assist them in finishing something? I have worked in the plumbing industry for over 35 years now either as a plumber, contractor, and now in the sales end of the business.

I have a friend like that and I will relate to you his story and try to describe his dilemma as best I can from what he told me once I became involved. He is fine now and can use any bathroom in his house without losing any sleep hearing that little dripping noise or the toilet refill several times during the night. As is often the case, the wife said to call me so I could make things better between them and get the problem fixed once and for all.

Now I may have embellished a bit here and there but trust me it happened almost like everything you will read here. I have mixed his words with mine and any attempt at humor is because it is too funny to not pass along.

Here is the story of my friend, the “homeowner” and his interesting attempt to repair his toilet.

“Now I know why plumbers make the money they do”, drama on the toilet front!

When I bought this house last year I inherited 3 pretty dodgy toilets. The mechanisms in them all had issues of one sort or another. I am certainly no toilet plumber, so I pretty much let them be and just dealt with it. Our main floor toilet in particular was the worst offender. It ran every 15 minutes or so and I knew something was leaky in there, but I didn't know what. All I knew was that it was getting worse as time went on. I had my brother-in-law replace something called a "flapper", but that was apparently not the issue because the sucker still ran everyday. Today I got hit with a water bill that was $25 higher than last month, so it was time to act.

Let me go into this by saying that I know absolutely nothing about fixing leaky toilets. The extent of my knowledge is "jiggle the handle a little bit and see if that works".

With my wife by my side giving me not-so-gentle encouragement, I went to work. I opened up the lid and assessed the situation. Yep, there’s water in there and a couple of parts but I had no idea what I was looking at. Knowing a little about computers it may be somewhat similar so I figured a complete format and reinstall was in order. I was going to rip the guts out of this toilet and insert new ones.

The first thing I did was turn the water off to the toilet. As I was doing this, I noticed a little drip coming from the water supply valve. In the toilet plumbing industry, this is known as a "bad thing". It wasn't a bad drip and it stopped when I closed the valve completely, but I saw it as an omen of things to come.

I drained the water from the tank and I set about removing the old stuff. I could tell that someone tried to fix it sometime before because none of the little parts fit right anymore. The looks of it screamed spare parts and "oh god I hope this works". I got the old float mechanism dealie out without too much trouble, but I noticed that to replace the thingy that houses the flapper I would have to separate the tank from the bowl. This concerned me a bit because I was fairly sure the two were supposed to be hermetically sealed to each other, and I had no confidence in my ability to secure them back together. I expressed my concerns to my wife, who plainly stated, "Please call Ice and have him fix it in 10 minutes or so.” One not to listen I said, “I’ll go for it, what's the worst that can happen?" She said, "Screw this up and we have to call a plumber to fix it." That's when I realized how right she was but if I didn't make an all-out attempt to fix this toilet I would be in trouble either way. If I didn’t succeed, we would have to call Ice anyway so I really had nothing to lose. I disassembled the whole shebang.

It took way too long to remove the flapper assembly from the tank and ended up having to break the plastic nut so I could tear the sucker off. I was getting angry at my toilet, but in a good "I'm gonna kick your butt" way. I was going to beat this toilet into submission. I was very careful about not damaging the porcelain though since replacing the guts of a toilet is one thing, but replacing the whole toilet itself is quite another. While I was removing the parts, bits of it were just sloughing off. Black “stuff” was all over my hands and everything I touched was left with this black ‘material’ on it. Exactly what is this ‘black’ material? All manner of what used to be rubber seals and washers were only held on by a hope and a prayer. This reinforced my decision to just pull it all apart and start from scratch. The date stamped into the lid of my toilet read 1982, which is when my house was built.

With old parts in hand, my wife and I sped off to the new Home Depot down the street in search of replacement parts.

There was a fairly helpful grey mustachioed fellow named Dan in the toilet aisle. He saw our old and busted parts and showed us what new stuff we'd need to replace it. We picked up a new flapper and overflow assembly and a new inlet valve doohickey that vaguely resembled what we had. Home Depot had a pretty informative cutaway toilet showing how these things worked and I studied it. Dan walked me through removing the old stuff (what the heck? I already removed it and the proof is in the form of the dirty old corroded toilet guts I am showing you) and how to install the new stuff. Apparently I just hand-tighten it all in and it works. Awesome! We walk out of there $30 poorer but bearing toilet trinkets. This is good . . . homeowner maintenance . . . I can do it.

When my wife and I get home I set about installing these plastic toilet oddities. The flapper and overflow valve went in just fine. The other bit with the float dealie also went in just fine. I did this all while the tank was still separated from the bowl. When I thought about how I was going to re-seat the tank on the bowl, I knew I screwed up. One of the bits that disintegrated during disassembly was the rubber gasket that seals the tank to the bowl. I was getting angrier and wished I could pour a shot or two of the single malt scotch I got for Christmas, but I had some driving to do.

Back to Home Depot for trip number two.

I know I should call Ice but now I’m on a mission. Plus my wife will never let it go that I could not fix a simple toilet. The wife does not want to go back with me again because she is NOW embarrassed to be with me and show the world her husband is an idiot and cannot fix a toilet.

I studied the replacement gasket selection for about 10 minutes before I settled on one. Nothing looked exactly like what I removed, but I figured (apparently correctly) that the inside diameter of the gasket should equal the outside diameter of the new flapper assembly I just installed. The new gasket was about $6.

I got the new gasket on without incident, so I settled the tank on the bowl. The gasket seemed good and looked like it might make a watertight seal to the bowl. I then looked at the bolt holes, and the old bolts. It was then that I realized I needed to make another trip to Home Depot to get new bolts and washers! Where was Dan now and why didn’t he tell me that I would need those parts too the first time? The old bolt holes had bits of old rubber washer stuck to them, and the bolts had the other bits of old rubber washer. I needed new rubber washers or there was going to be a torrent of water in my bathroom.

Back to Home Depot for trip number three.

I look for Dan but luckily he is no where to be found and now my “helpful hardware” guy is named Eric. He showed me the tank to bowl kit with the correct sized washers, but I had to buy them in a package with new brass bolts and the corresponding hardware. That was okay by me as now I was dead-set on just making everything but the tank and bowl new. This hardware package cost me $5.

What an afternoon but no worries I have this almost fixed and can once again have my wife look at me as ‘provider’ and keeper of a safe household. That is until I returned home.

When I got home I set about re-reading the installation instructions as I wanted to get this right the first time. Every other line screamed out "DO NOT OVER-TIGHTEN! DO NOT OVER-TIGHTEN!" so I was very careful and conservative about how much I cranked down on the nuts that secured that tank to the bowl. The LAST thing I wanted to do was crack the tank or the bowl. I could hear my wife now inside my head and that is not a reality I wish to face.

After I got everything secured down as tight as I was comfortable making it, I turned on the water and prayed to [insert god-of-choice here]. The first thing I noticed was water streaming out of the water supply valve, and the second thing I noticed was water pouring out of the bottom of the tank, right where one of the bolts secured the tank to the bowl. In my mind it flashed . . . this was "WORST CASE SCENARIO" that I had dreaded about 7 hours ago.

I had two leaks, one of them was from the water supply valve and the only way I could shut it off was to cut the water off completely to my house. In my panic I fiddled with the water supply hose enough to slow it to a slow drip. I didn't let it run long enough to fill the toilet tank so I tried to stick a milk jug behind the toilet to catch the water leaking out from back behind the tank somewhere.

I was utterly defeated.

I followed all of the instructions and was as careful as I could be, but I turned a slow toilet leak into two separate floods. That was it for me. I was not going to touch that toilet again. I got angry at it and gave it my all, but I was a complete failure. I am sure my wife will bring it up at every party, campfire, or snow machining outing we attend.

My wife took pity on my poor pathetic emasculated self and called our friend, Icewind. He has worked in the plumbing industry over 35 years now and can surely fix our problem. She poured me a drink, because I sure needed one as I was envisioning the outrageous bill I would have surely received from a plumber if I had called one to fix this mess.

My wife called Ice, who is a friend of ours and is quite the handyman. His name is Icewind because . . . well we won’t go there now but I can now say she officially loves Ice for helping us with my problem. He arrived at our house less than thirty minutes after her call and set right to work. He asked me to shut the water off at the main house supply valve. After that was done, he extracted the valve cartridge from the toilet water supply and wrapped the threads with Teflon tape. ‘Home Depot Dan’ didn’t say anything about no darn tape! That fixed the water supply leak. Ice turned on the water to the toilet and remarked that everything looked good but I just didn't tighten down the bolts enough. He cranked them down harder, and now everything was awesome. The toilet on my main floor is as good as new.

Ice said that I did just fine with the toilet repair. The only thing I screwed up with was that I didn't tighten the bolts down hard enough to force an effective seal between the brass bolts and rubber washers. The water supply leak wasn't anything I did wrong, but now I know how to fix that kind of problem after watching Ice work.

I am honestly looking forward to replacing the guts of my other two toilets now. I am going to fix those right now so I can be done with this ‘project’. The one downstairs is talking smack about me and it needs a serious beat down.

And my wife . . . well she probably still thinks I’m an idiot and will never go back with me to Home Depot.

So there you have the answer to an age old problem . . . call that friend before you go off trying to fix something you are not really sure about. It reminds me of the old southern saying I heard over and over as a young boy . . . “Ice . . . get away from that wheelbarrow! ! ! ! You know you don’t know nuttin’ about machinery! !”

Hehehe . . . it happened almost like that!

Ice