Spent a little time at the hardware store last evening, wondering What else do I need?
This is not the place to have that conversation with yourself.
The self-chat came about because of one we had in the kitchen on Sunday. I remember it well, I was adding food to the cat’s feeder when The Yankee said “I’m having a vision … and you’re not going to like it … ”
Because there was something else to fix, which is always an adventure here, which has been closely documented in this space. This time it was the tank on the toilet in the master bathroom, which has already been fixed once. Or so we thought.
Now, instead of the charm of the occasionally running toilet, we had the fun of a continually running toilet. We’re not talking about the bad seal of a bad flapper in the tank that allows water seepage and requires tank replenishment. No, this is was a malfunctioning float valve, sticking in the wrong position and threatening to flood the room from the storage tank.
If you go to the website for the piece of equipment they have a breadcrumb FAQ that allows you to ascertain what is causing your problem. The fourth level of questioning is “Is your device more than five years old?”
The response, if your answer is yes, is “Buy a new one.”
So I had to buy a new float device. The replacement was an upgrade of the same broken model, which was the second cheapest at the hardware store. I’m beginning to learn a lot about the previous owner of the house.
Bought that and nothing else. I’d gone through a mental walk of the house. Nothing is broken in that room. Don’t have to replace anything in there.
And then home to replace the thing, where I found just one more space that, had it been designed to be just four inches wider, would have been SO much more convenient.
You take off the tank cover, drain the basin, dry the bottom and start disconnecting things. First the old flapper and chain, and then the feeder tube. Finally you make it underneath the tank which almost abuts the cabinet. There is a threaded clamp and lug nut that must be removed from the bottom of the tank’s inlet tube. All three of these piece are made of plastic. One of them is a little more than hand tight.
So I have to gentle try to use a wrench on a piece of plastic, only there isn’t enough space between the porcelain and the cabinet. A lot of time and several mutterings happen. I disconnect the supply tube at the shutoff valve.
At this point I’m wondering if I should know more engineers, because they might get a good laugh out of this.
To unstick the stuck one I must re-tighten the freed plastic lug nut. After several attempts this is done, the offending inlet tube and broken float. Install the new one.
I’ve managed to jab and cut my finger and the palm of my hand in this process.
“Easy installation!” says the box. And it was, even the blister packet, the scourge of western capitalism, wasn’t a difficult obstacle. It was the removal that was tough. But we’ve gone so green with these devices that we’re using twice as much plastic as necessary to make a toilet go. Technology that the Romans mastered has been over-engineered.
There are now two chains in that particular basin, one from the flapper to the handle and another from a guard on the float (designed to save water) which also goes to the handle. This will not prevent anything.
There’s also a plastic roller device, which looks like it would excel at making miniature croissants, that attaches to the line that feeds water to the overflow tube. This is supposed to save water. That’s also the job of that little plastic fake screw that sits just to the side of the float, which regulates how much water goes into the tank before it ultimately goes into the bowl.
There are two pounds of plastic creating a triple redundancy of water usage control on a device which will be broken in five years. That should last just long enough for the plumbing techs to over-design the next chunk of plastic, so there’s that.
