Down the Tubes

In an ongoing saga, we finally called in a plumber to take a look at our leaky broken toilet this afternoon.

About a week or so ago, we noticed the tank was constantly dripping, and so, being the handyman that I am, I popped open the lid and had a look under the hood to assess the situation. Of course, in classic style, doing so only exacerbated the situation by finalizing the damage that was already done and causing the minor leak.

A PVC pipe in there had cracked, and was allowing water into the overflow causing the tank to essentially constantly try to fill itself, at the rate of a small trickle. When I touched it, it just snapped right off, so I had to get creative in my solution.

Much duct tape was used. Much hand washing was involved. All to little avail.

But a temporary cessation was achieved, so I was satisfied, until we all kinda realized, that leak wasn't gonna stop. Isn't, I should say, as it continues to this day.

We experimented with several things to make the haphazard fix job more workable. I had to adjust the handle so the sealing ball wouldn't pop out, since without the pipe there is nothing to keep the ball from just shooting up when you flush. And then we tried several things to either increase or decrease the buoyancy of the float, in an attempt to trick it into thinking it was full and stop dripping, all to no effect.

Duct tape being the obvious solution, save WD-40 which I couldn't figure out a practical way to use in this situation, I tried duct taping styrofoam packing peanuts to it, to no avail. Then Dave suggested we make it heavier, so the water flow would be fast enough to get past the stop point before reaching trickle-mode, to no avail. Neither of these, if you think about it, would really do any good, and even if it were to, the constant trickle leak from the tank to the bowl would eventually make it want to fill again anyway.

So, after a week of emotions which perfectly match the Stages of Acceptance, we finally just called a plumber, who took a look at it, tried to fix it, and eventually said, "Yea, I don't have the parts on me to fix this, we'll give you a call in the morning and we'll take it from there."

This is, of course, after ransacking the house trying to find the instruction manual for the toilet (I didn't even know such things existed, but hey, it's Japan, so surely there was one, and hey, I'm from America and never actually have bought a toilet before to know if there is such a manual there either.), and while doing so, him calling the landlord to ask if they had the specs on the toilet, to, guess what, no avail.

So, here we are, with a toilet that's even less functional than before the plumber got here, three guys that produce no small quantity of bodily waste, and a night of trying to cope until the morning, when we'll have a different solution, and a different quote from the plumber. I'm sure the part will turn out to be rare indeed, because our toilet is undoubtedly no longer made, and the parts are no longer readily available, and as such will be a costly endeavor, as these things always are.

So not only is the water bill going to be high, but the cost of fixing the damned toilet will be more, most likely.

Grr. And all this time I thought my MacGyver-like skills could get us through this time of crisis.

And, to make things worse, the internet is crapping out on us. Slow as all get out. Which means no escaping to Internet Land, aside from posting lengthy blogs about the waterworks. Such is life.