The sink is filled with various tools, wrenches, hacksaws, assorted ratchet heads, a screwdriver, a chisel, several nuts and bolts and a rubber headed hammer. On the floor sit two mop buckets, some paper towels and a plastic bag filled with toilet tank innards. What started as a running toilet has turned into so much more, but I am ready for it. My hair is tied back, my glasses on and my overalls already trashed with bike grease, so the damage is done. Time to get this sucker to flush.
I am the owner of Lighthouse Bikes, Tours, Rentals and Repairs, a small bicycle shop on the coast of Southern Maine. Did I know what I was doing when I opened this shop six years ago? Not a bit. No more than I know now about fixing toilets, but amidst various blunders, a tremendous deal of good fortune and helpful friends and dedicated employees, the shop has found success and I am hopeful that that luck will extend to toilet repair. Money is always tight, plumbers a luxury not yet mine.
It started as a slight running sound that graduated to an incessant one, and then to a full-on leak, despite the attempts of my and several employees trying our hands at tightening various fasteners. After ripping out the guts of the tank, it became apparent that the whole pot had to be replaced.
I tried to use my feminine wiles to enlist one of my mechanics to do the work. He is a Do-it-yourself, home repair enthusiast, but he just looked at me and said, “No.” Bicycle mechanics can be like that, you know.
So, this afternoon I drove to Lowe’s to procure a new unit. I sidled up to a large gentleman wearing the signature blue and white vest with a name tag swinging from a lanyard around his neck, sparkled my eyes at him and asked if we could talk toilets.
“Sure, I would love to.” He replied with a good-natured grin, and led me down the aisle to discuss possibilities.
It was overwhelming. There were self-cleaning toilets, throne like toilets, toilets with round and elongated seats, and even one that boasted the ability to flush a gallon of golf balls. “That sounds extreme,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, don’t think I am going to need to do that,” said the gentleman.
As we made our way through our options we came to the last and the least expensive one on the row. Perfect. I said my bicycle shop had found success, not that it was lucrative.
“This one looks perfect,” I told him and with that he picked it up with relative ease (the box boasted that it was 92 pounds) and placed it on my cart. “I really don’t know what I am doing. Never replaced a toilet before,” I commented as we passed several signs offering installation for a fee.
“You got this,” he assured me. I am going to get you the gold standard in wax rings and this is all you have to do…” He coached me in a clear, direct fashion and I left feeling as if he had just squared my shoulders and sent me back into the game imbibed with confidence and enthusiasm.
I returned to the shop and set to work, first disconnecting and dragging the old toilet out of the way, scraping out the old wax ring that circumnavigated the stink hole. I learned that this is not something to be touched by hand, as it feels and smells like a semi-decomposed fish left rotting in a bucket of swill.
Once removed, I replaced it with the new deluxe edition that I had been given. I looked at it with a bit of trepidation, the man at Lowe’s words ringing in my ears: “Once you place the new toilet on the wax rings, do not move it. Do not shift it or readjust it or there will be water everywhere.” This meant I had one chance to align the new 92-pound toilet on top of the new ring — and one chance only.
“Okay,” I asked my mechanic, “can you help me with one little thing?” He peeled off his blue latex work gloves and strolled over. Together we hoisted it and held it aloft, over the hole, and gingerly, we lined it up with the bolts sticking up out of the floor and placed it down. I pushed it gently onto the wax ring in the hopes of creating the all-important seal.
“I don’t think the bolts are long enough. We need to pick it up and put in longer bolts,” commented the mechanic, in what could only be described as a cocksure manner as he looked skeptically at the space around the hovering base of the toilet and the floor.
Like a mother defending her children from a wild beast, I sprang in between him and the toilet. “No! It will compress and everything will fit! The man at Lowe’s said! He said no matter what, don’t reposition it.”
“Those guys don’t know anything. We need to move it.”
I promptly sat on the toilet, both to protect it and to use my weight to compress the wax ring and seal the joint further. As I did, I leaned over and screwed the nuts on the bolts that fastened the toilet to the floor. It worked!
Deftly,I replaced the hose and attached the seat cover and tank. It was a thing of beauty. I flushed it once, then again. Not a leak in sight. I took a picture. Even my mechanic seemed proud.
Lighthouse Bikes, Tours, Rentals, and Toilet Repair. Watch out world.