With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

Plumbing: 1 for 2

2012 December 21 21:12

I've gotten into a couple of plumbing projects at the house. One successful, one's still pending.

The one I've been working on longer is the downstairs toilet. For those of you who've visited our house, this is the one in the bathroom off the kitchen that always used to run more often than it ought. Well, during November it started to get really bad, running every several minutes. It finally had to be fixed.

I tried replacing the gasket where the flush valve sealed; that didn't fix it. So I realized the seal that was leaking was the next one down, where the valve assembly pictured here:

seals against the bottom of the tank. Unfortunately, the ring that fastens it to the bottom of the tank is on the outside bottom of the tank, which you can only get to when the tank is completely off.

Removing the tank got interesting. It turned out that the nut on one of the three bolts that held the tank on was rusted solid. I ended up cutting it off with a rotary grinder. Here's the remains:

Here on the lower left part of the outlet, you can see where it had been leaking.

Here's the tank all put back together and ready to install. Bolts shiny, seals fresh, ready to go.

Aaaaaaand...our shower has started dripping again. Blech. This one I haven't fixed yet. The valves aren't leaking, it's just dripping out of the shower head.

Here's the outer parts of the valve taken apart

Here's the cartridge; this contains the bits that should be replacable:

Unfortunately...I can't find one. I looked in four real local hardware stores, and they didn't have it, and I don't think it can be ordered.

So that one's going to be ongoing. I'll probably have to cut walls and stuff and put in shut-off valves. That's going to have to wait until January.