I t’s 3 a.m. You stumble into the bathroom and your toilet starts hissing at you like a demon in the darkness.
Or you visit the loo in the middle of the day, only to find it leaking precious fluids down the drain.
Why do toilets do such things?
Part of the problem is that the toilet is one of those modern conveniences that most people try to fix themselves, usually with a paper clip and duct tape. What a lot of fixers end up with is a self-actuating monster that starts to flush itself when you step into the bathroom and then balks when you’re ready to leave.
Like dogs, toilets can be housebroken. They can be taught to flush on command, sit until you summon them and not whiddle all over your bathroom floor. It just takes a little knowledge and some elbow grease. Do-it-yourselfers usually have the right idea. They often just need better tools.
Toilets may look the same as always, but their innards have changed.
If you take the top off the tank and spot one of those bulbous plungers that heave up and down like a winded jogger, you’ve got an ancien regime lavabo. That’s French for really old toilet. It needs to be operated on and the guts surgically removed.
The idea is to install more modern technology that looks tidier, costs less and eliminates the need to constantly adjust the floating ball, technically called a ball cock, to get the water level right. The new gizmo does that with the twist of a plastic ring.
What you want is a float cup fill valve, which eliminates the awkwardly named ball cock and float ball. The water level detector is contained within the part, voiding the need for repeated adjustment of the float.
And while you have your toilet under the knife, be sure to replace the flapper, the rubberized flush valve at the bottom of the tank that releases the water when pulled up. Most toilets that won’t shut up usually just need a new flapper.
To properly sedate your toilet, first turn off the water. Every toilet has a valve somewhere, except maybe Sir John Harington’s original invention in the late 16th century.
If you’re strong enough, unscrew the bolts holding the tank to the flush bowl and cart the tank to a nice, dry place where you won’t get all wet. Removing it also makes it easier to unscrew the parts and replace them. If the tank screws are corroded, get someone to help you and just remove the entire toilet.
When you place the tank back on the flush bowl, tighten the bolts enough so the gasket between the upper and lower toilet halves doesn’t leak, but not so tight that it cracks the porcelain and you have to go toilet shopping.
When replacing the gunky gasket between the flush bowl and the sewer pipe, don’t forget to remove the nuts holding the bowl down. Once they’re off, rock the bowl slowly back and forth to break the seal, then roll it to the side. Water will leak all over. That’s normal.
Wear a mask or stick a rag down the sewer pipe so you don’t get a whiff of sewer gas. Scrape off the old beeswax gasket, get things nice and clean, then press a new gasket with a polyethylene flange onto the sewer hole. That’s usually all it takes, but some plumbers add an extra beeswax seal without a flange, because they just hate being called back. Be sure to remove the rag if you gagged the sewer throat, or the toilet won’t flush.
Set the toilet back in place and sit on it until it sinks slowly to the floor.
Once you’re done, have all the occupants of the house form a semicircle around the toilet, hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” to assure the toilet that you still love it and everyone will continue to visit it as least once a day.
For instructions that will take you through every turn of the toilet screw, go to www.fluidmaster.com or, for the toilet intellectual, www.toiletology.com.
Jim Kjeldsen is a former assistant news editor at The Herald. When he’s not busy studying the innards of toilets, you can find him these days at his new business, La Conner Hardware.
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