Tanked

The entire country is drunk on the excitement of the inauguration, it seems, which is coming up this week. So I am going to do us all a favor, and not say another word about it.

See, aren't you glad you turned to my blog this fine day? Not only do I provide witty and uplifting commentary, I am even non-partisan. [That is as opposed to bi-partisan, the latest Washington buzz phrase.]

Instead of politics, I'm going to take up the topic of toilets. Although some cynics would make the claim that there is a certain amount of common ground, I will not take the plunge.

As I may have mentioned once or 1,000 times, I am not the luckiest of souls to ever walk the earth. If it can go wrong, for some reason, it usually does in my world. I don't really know why it is that way, but that seems to be my fate. So it should come as no surprise to anyone to learn that my toilet in the upstairs bathroom, the least visible area of the house for me, would break down for absolutely no good reason, and I would be left up a creek without a paddle. [See how topical I can be? It's a gift, but I try to stay modest about it all.]

It all started innocently enough, as most disasters do. I was in the kitchen, once again wrestling with that age old question, WHAT do I make for dinner, when my eldest child informed me that he was tired of the wet bathroom floor. Since his younger sister was out of town, and had been for several days, I didn't think it took a brain surgeon to figure out where the fault lay, and said so. I added the obvious solution to the problem, but that didn't satisfy him. He said, "Well, the water isn't really by the tub, it's more across from the toilet, actually."

I was becoming quite alarmed at this point, since for the water to be in front of the toilet, it would have to travel rather a ways. So, with a rising note of hysteria creeping into my voice, I inquired as to exactly how much water we were talking about. To which he replied, "Well, there isn't an inch of water standing on the floor, but there is quite a bit."

Hm. Water standing on the floor, especially when used in conjunction with the words, "quite a bit," is not something that any homeowner wants to hear. Ever. So I hustled up the stairs to investigate, expecting to see a few damp spots on the floor, and deliver a lecture about responsibility. Instead, what I found was Lake Huron, (for those who do not get my oblique humor, that is a takeoff on "Here on" the floor,) and it precipitated immediate action.

First, I turned off the water supply, twisting the shut off valve as tight as I could to be sure no more water could possibly escape the pipe and add to the raging current coursing across the bathroom floor. More on this later, rest assured.

Then I ran for the towel supply, which I keep handy at all times for eventualities such as this. In your life, you may not have a huge supply of ragged towels, kept handy for the disaster which is sure to befall you at any moment. In my life, it's a requirement. Thus, I grabbed my handy stash, and ran back upstairs to sop up the mess. All the wet towels into the bathtub, soak up more water, and then I finally got down to the floor, dry, a little the worse for the wear, but hopefully salvageable.

Then began the process of determining the cause of this immense disaster. I started feeling around on the bottom of the tank, to see if it was wet. I have no idea, at this moment, why I leaped to the conclusion I did, but for some ridiculous reason, I assumed the problem was the water intake pipe going into the tank. I thought it may have failed, so decided to just take the whole works apart and see what was going on. Evidently, I was not thinking too clearly, because although I did think to flush the toilet and get some water out of the tank, I didn't dry the bottom, leaving a good inch of water that wouldn't go out through the drain.

I have no excuse - sometimes I am just an idiot. [Just in case you know someone who may or may not be named Dave, please do not tell him I made that confession. I would never hear the end of it. If he were real. Which he isn't, of course.]

Two truly interesting pieces of information came out of that little exercise. The first thing I learned was that the shut off valve had not shut off all the way. The second piece of information was that the tank was no longer bolted to the stool.

That was the moment I realized I had much bigger problems, and the fill valve was the least of my worries. Because the entire tank went sideways on the stool, and water once again seemed to be everywhere.

I assure you, I was gobsmacked.

A toilet tank does not ordinarily come unbolted, to the best of my knowledge, and I simply couldn't make sense of a freestanding tank sitting askew in my bathroom with water flowing through the holes where the bolts should be. I determined that one of them was actually down on the floor underneath the tank, while the other was still hanging on by a thread.

The dam of saturated towels were, at this point, merely a diversion in the stream, serving no effective purpose. On the contrary, they were actually making the situation worse, by spreading the water further afield. The water depth was not an inch, I will grant him that, but it was as close as you can get. In short, we were experiencing a flood, and what was worse, it was getting deeper by the minute.

Naturally, there was an additional wrinkle, just in case the whole situation wasn't quite bad enough. The water flowing from the tank with such abandon was filled with the residue of a bleach cleaning tablet which I had popped into the tank a month or so previously. It is the only time I have ever used one of those tablets, and I can assure you, I will never be so foolish as to take the chance on doing it again. I don't know if it was coincidence or what, but I am deeply suspicious about the whole thing, I can tell you.

So, to bring us all up to speed, I am now standing in the middle of a bona fide flood in an upstairs bathroom, which is not only not improving, but getting worse. Super. Another SNAFU for us.

Just to make things a little more fun, at that moment I suddenly realized that the fill pipe, which was theoretically turned off by the shutoff valve, was, in fact, dripping at a rather speedy rate, and water continued to flow. ARGH. I knew then that the situation called for crisis management, and I finally came to the only conclusion I could. Time to turn off the water main, obviously.

I raced down the stairs, barely giving my concerned mother a fleeting glance backward, as she tried to ask what was happening. In fine form, I delivered the only statement that seemed appropriate at that moment. "I HATE MY LIFE." The pronouncement did not make my mother feel a rush of pride, I must admit, and I do feel bad about that. Sorry mom. Sometimes, you just gotta vent.

I turned off the new water main shut off valve, feeling a small rush of pleasure that my previous water catastrophe had resulted in a better outcome this time, only to realize that it, too, was leaking. But it was leaking on the basement floor, not the bathroom floor, and I was prepared to live with that problem in the short term, in favor of staunching the flow in the bathroom.

Next, I ran upstairs and tried to figure out what was wrong, but none of it made sense to me any longer. I realized, stressed out as I was, that it was time to call in the professionals. I had done my best, but it wasn't good enough, and the time had come to hire someone who would be able to fix the entire situation.

I called my usual plumber, who, predictably, [did I mention this was Friday afternoon, about 5:30, right after New Year's?] was out of town, with no back up. Super. Things going exactly as you would expect. I explained I had no water and several people in the house, to which they said, "Well, call a plumber."

Okayyyyy. I thought that was what I did.

Then I called my handyman, whom I call upon in times of distress, to come and save me from myself. No answer. This has become a catastrophe now, as we have no water, and we have the entire weekend stretching ahead of us.

My 82 year old mother is always game for fixing things. I think it was her example that made me realize that I can do anything around here that I really have to. She and I have fixed faucets and outlet switches and all sorts of stuff, and we are the original Ms. Fixit crowd.

Mom and I took off for the store to buy a new shut off valve, so at least we could staunch the flow of water onto the floor. That was the thing that had to be done first, and I was all for getting the process underway.

You may know this already, but I was extremely surprised to learn that there are many, many different shut off valve sizes out there. I am not really sure why they can't just make pipes a standard size, but apparently that's one more thing that doesn't make sense in this world. As mom and I stood there contemplating the increasingly out of control situation, my handyman guy, Kevin, called me. At last, something going my way.

He came immediately, fixed up the problem, and was gone with $39 of the best spent dollars I've ever paid, almost before we knew it. The problem was solved, the shut off valve worked, glory, hallelujah, life was good.

I wish I could say everyone lived happily ever after. Or maybe even just The End. But you knew that wouldn't be it. That is too easy, too quick, too uncomplicated. No, there is a follow up.

About a week after Lake Huron dried up, my eldest son, the one who seems to love to deliver bad news lately, came into my office where I was working and announced, "Mom. You aren't going to like this at all." Augh. [Second caveat. Whenever one of your very own offspring announces to you that there is something you aren't going to like, you should always assume that you will absolutely hate it.]

Obviously, I said the only thing I could to that. "What's wrong now?"

"Well," he said, "there seems to be water all over the floor in the upstairs bathroom again." WHAT???? If you are a Snoopy fan, you will remember how occasionally, when Linus was really surprised about something, all his little hairs would stand on end. That is how I felt upon hearing my son utter those dreadful words.

My hair stood on end.

I ran upstairs, briefly pausing to thank him for at least notifying me this time, and sure enough, the bathroom was soaked once again. Augh. Now what?

I felt around, thinking that surely it would be something simple, but nothing obvious came to mind. I simply couldn't understand what was going on, because there seemed to be water everywhere this time. I looked at the bolts, and they were securely in place. I looked at the fill valve, and it was dampish, but not dripping. I simply didn't understand, so I opened the cover, and saw that a plunger may not come amiss.

Not being entirely sure, I flushed. The water started to rise, and rise and rise, and showed no sign of stopping, when I finally reached down and turned the shut off valve.

You were expecting me to say it was broken again, weren't you? See. Now you know how I feel. But you would be wrong, because, as always, the surprise was on me, and it actually worked.

The water rose to the very top of the bowl, and it stopped. I heaved a sigh of relief, then realized that I would have to try to plunge without overflowing the water. That was going to be an interesting trick, but I ever so carefully put the plunger in, and somehow, some way, I managed to give it a small plunge, and flush. Down the water went.

As I stood there watching, however, it occurred to me that even with the toilet plugged, it never should have gotten so high. I lifted off the tank cover, and glanced inside, but the water level was at the bottom, of course, and I reached down to turn the valve back on.

I watched the water rising slowly, and listening to it, thought it sounded a little odd. I couldn't quite understand what the problem was, and was about to put the cover on the tank, when I realized that the float had popped up, but the water was still running. It ran and ran, and before I knew it, it was almost flowing over the top, before I reached down to shut off the valve again.

So that was the answer. The stupid fill valve wasn't working. Simple fix, easy answer, no need to take anything much apart, simple to take care of. Now that I knew what was wrong, I would be able to fix it in no time.

I went to the hardware store a day or so later, leaving the water shut off in the meantime, of course, and everyone under orders not to use that toilet. Eventually, I got the little rubber washer that wears out, brought it home, and expected it to be taken care of in minutes.

Not so fast.

I replaced the old washer, put the fill valve back together, turned on the water, and waited with anticipation. Only to find that once again, the float popped up, and the water remained free flowing.

Augh.

I couldn't deal with it right then, so off went the water once again [that new shut off valve had quite the workout] and it sat for another couple of days. After a great deal of consideration and contemplation, I selected the new fill valve that I thought would give me the greatest security, and later in the day, went home to install it.

I assembled the fill valve, and then turned on the water once again. I waited with anticipation, watching the bottom of the tank with the sort of rapt attention usually reserved for rock stars or the President-elect.

I wish I could say this was the end of the story. I wish all had been well. Alas, it was not. Because of course that valve was leaking around the bottom of the tank, and no matter how much I tightened it, no matter how many ways I tried to make it work, it refused. It was a failure. I was incapable of installing a simple valve that a five year old could handle without trouble.

It was demoralizing. I quit on it, deciding that tomorrow was another day. I may not be Scarlett O'Hara, but I certainly am Irish, and if it worked for her, it can work for me, too.

Of course, that was a book, and this is real life, so obviously, it still leaked this morning. Which is when I decided that the valve was the weak link instead of me. [See, I'm putting that whole reframing resolution to good use.] I hustled off to the hardware store once again, procured yet another fill valve, brought it home, assembled and installed, and then?

IT WORKED! YAY!

They say persistence is a virtue, but if it is, it's only because you have no choice. But I can tell you one thing that I have learned. If you are going to take the plunge and do your own toilet repairs, make sure your tank is bolted on, and your shut off valve works.