One of the only good things about rental accommodation (apart from the absence of enormous mortgage repayments) is that if anything goes catastrophically wrong the property owner foots the bill for repairs.
We’d lived in ThePalace(OfLove) for nine (NINE!) months without incident, but faced our first challenge this week.
On Monday morning we found a large-ish puddle around the base of our toilet (green arrow in my highly artistic illustration below).
The InformationSuperHighway indicated that the cause was probably the gasket at the base of the toilet and something that could be DIYed BUT would require the removal of the toilet bowl. Errrmmm … hell to the no, that is plumber territory no matter what the cost.
We did what any sensible people would do and surrounded the base of the bowl with layers of towels and skipped merrily off to our respective places of enslavement.
Everything I read recommended checking the tank for leaks BEFORE attempting something as drastic as toilet removal (or, in our case, calling the plumber) and even though we had seen nothing in the morning to indictate a tank leak, I checked thoroughly when I returned home from SaltMinesLimited. And lo! there was a single drip on the pipe connecting the tank to the bowl.
I suspected it could be simply condensation, but decided to wrap the pipe in a towel and see what happened.
Unfortunately while I was wrapping, I slightly bumped the pipe, causing water to gush EVERYWHERE from the bottom of the tank (indicated by the red arrow)!
ACK! I immediately turned off the water, mopped up the litres and litres of water from all over the floor and opened the tank to investigate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite work out what had gone wrong (I blame The Horrid Cold) and Don was out seeing his very favourite band, so I left the water off and was extremely thankful that we have other operational toilets in ThePalce(OfLove).
Don checked it out Tuesday evening after dinner and we realised that the red part below had completely split in two and that the fat bit should not really just be floating precariously over the hole.
This is where we are incredibly thankful that I bumped it when I did, because I shudder to think of the flooding potential if we were not around (particularly as problem toilet is located on the 4th floor) – and really, it was only a matter of time until that happened. Thanks Universe!
Fortunately Bunnings was open until 8pm the next evening, so we headed out and returned with this excellent replacement thingy for only $60(ish).
Donaldo installed it in a flash(ish) and we are once again with toilet!
Not content with this achievement he went on to fix the flush button on the ground floor toilet was was getting occasionally stuck.
Hurrah for DIY!