Plumbing Adventures Part 2

Daily Ramble 87: Plumbing Adventures Part 2

I continued my exploration into plumbing again yesterday and I believe I was successful. At least I didn’t have a flooded bathroom so I’m pretty sure things worked out.

I started off the morning having to pick up a full toilet repair kit – the Fluidmaster 400a that I got the day before did not include the overflow pipe that I broke. The full kit included both another fill valve and a new part – the flush valve. The later included to overflow pipe that I needed. Actually, the flush valve mechanism included the pipe so I had to replace the whole thing.

The reason I felt this was a bigger issue was that I had to remove the entire tank off the back of the toilet for this flush valve replacement which of course is something I’ve never done before.

It was actually easier than I expected and I didn’t realize that pretty much, other than the bolts to hold it in place, the tank just sits on what’s called a sponge gasket to seal the connection between the tank and the bowl. Guess I learned a bunch from this experience.

In any case, I did have to make another trip back to Home Depot since I had no idea if I had a hack saw or where it would possibly be and I needed to cut the overflow pipe down to size so that if it ever started to overflow, the water would go down the pipe rather than out the lever opening.

So…long story short…I replaced the flush valve and put the tank back on the bowl, reinstalled the fill valve, and got everything hooked up like I thought it should be. I was pretty sure I had to have done something wrong, but nothing leaked…no whistling…no running water…I did it!

I successfully fixed the toilet. It flushes. It fills. It all works as expected. I truly feel like I leveled up my plumbing skill with this experience. Next up…the garbage disposal in the kitchen?