Flushed with relief

Just reliving this experience sends a cold chill down my spine.

If my wife hadn’t spotted a minor issue with the handle of our main-floor toilet, there’s a good chance we would’ve endured a disastrous water breach in our house. And had that happened, the water would have flowed unrestricted for hours, likely damaging a good portion of our main floor — completely destroying our recently finished basement.

A few nights ago, my wife discovered that the main-floor toilet was no longer flushing when you pressed the handle. The two-piece had worked for two decades without faltering — part of the bathroom renovation I completed shortly after we moved to this property. As a matter of fact, in December 2016, I wrote a Reno Boss column about this bathroom, dubbed the “Coca-Cola Bathroom,” since it is adorned from top to bottom with Coke paraphernalia collected throughout the years.

After a brief inspection of the toilet, I found that the inner plastic lever had a non-reparable crack and could no longer lift the flush mechanism. It would need to be replaced.

I decided to remove the handle and lever, to have them on hand, so that I could choose a similar replacement. In doing so, I noticed that the tank budged slightly, which is odd, because the tank of a two-piece toilet should be firmly secured to the base.

Reaching down below the tank, I located the wing nut on the brass bolt that fastens the tank to the base on the right-hand side and felt that it was loose. I began to twist the wing nut in order to tighten the tank onto the base, but after one partial turn, the wing nut fell into my hand and water began to flow through the hole where the brass bolt goes through. Shocked for a moment, I had the wherewithal to pull up on the chain still attached to the flusher inside the tank to quickly drain the water from the tank into the toilet bowl, before it all flowed through the hole. Then I reached along the other side to shut off the water supply.

After I’d cursed for a minute out of sheer astonishment, the severity of what could have happened had the wing nut let go on its own — possibly while we were out for the day — began to sink in. As I dried the area around the toilet base, I couldn’t understand how this could have happened. Aren’t brass bolts impervious to rust and deterioration? Isn’t that why brass bolts are used to join tanks to toilet bases?

These questions notwithstanding, the reality is that this brass bolt had failed. And if my wife hadn’t noticed that the toilet wasn’t flushing, and if I hadn’t noticed that the tank had moved, the wing nut could have dropped out on its own, allowing water to flow unfettered out of the tank and into the house, causing an unimaginable amount of damage. Water can be the great destroyer, and we had come uncomfortably close to experiencing the adverse effects of product failure.

Right then and there, as a cold sweat came upon me, I decided we would no longer rely on a $4 brass bolt that had the potential to cause tens of thousands of dollars in water damage, as unlikely as it was that this scenario would repeat itself. No matter, the two-piece was out.

Later that day, a sleek looking one-piece toilet was picked up and — once the old toilet was removed — set atop the new wax ring and secured to the floor. Then the water feed mesh hose was attached to the toilet valve and given a test run. A few quick flushes indicated that the toilet was ready for use — the Coca-Cola Bathroom was back in action!

The one-piece has a top-side dual flush button in lieu of the traditional side handle you find on a two-piece tank. Most importantly, the one-piece is just that: one piece of porcelain, no brass bolts required.

I feel so grateful that luck was on our side and that a fortuitous string of events led me to the issue before it turned into a major catastrophe.

Although I consider myself diligent when it comes to the ongoing assessments of household processes and devices that provide essential services, not once had I considered checking the brass bolt that connects the tank to the base of a two-piece toilet.

We’re definitely a one-piece toilet household now.

RenoBoss.Inc@outlook.com