Life Update

[pameladean]

Eh, again. Some money is coming in now, which is a considerable relief, although it is much too light for the bore of the matter. Also things keep breaking. Five hundred dollars to fix the car. It's good we had the money, but really we had other plans for it. And the upstairs toilet tank apparently has a crack in it, as it is dripping water at a less-than-glacial rate. I've got a plant trough under it now (sans plants; no light in there), but before that the water managed to work its way through the floor and then through the the plaster of the bathroom ceiling underneath and hit people in the head, making an alarming blister-like effect in the ceiling as it went.

The water is not coming from the water line or anywhere in the connections between that and the tank. It's just dripping off the bottom of the tank.

My mother suggested drying out the tank and putting some epoxy in it, but I don't know if that is what one ought to do. I tend to fall back on plumbers at the slightest provocation, but this is easier when one is not worried about money.

Pamela

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

could be condensation, but it sounds more like the seal between the tank and the bowl.

that's where our brand new toilet is leaking at the moment, anyhow...

[pameladean]

It's way too much for condensation, and the majority of the tank outside is dry.

What are you doing about yours?

This is a comparatively new toilet too. 1997 or so. *snarl*

Pamela

[branwynelf.livejournal.com]

What if you were to add food dye to the tank?

That might help you track where the water is coming from - if it is in fact coming from a seal (hopefully leaving an obvious thin trail of water from where it's leaking to where it's dripping) or directly through a crack in the porcelain? If that's the case, sealing the crack would be easier because you'd be able to see exactly where it was, or you'd know if you just needed a new rubber plug for the seal.

Did that make sense?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

calling the woman who installed it (not so helpful) and having her check/possibly replace the seal between the tank and the bowl. it seems possible to me that since it's brand new, it's slightly misseated. (missat? hmm.)

but if you can take that one apart and see if there is a seal there, replacing it might help.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The blistering ceiling probably won't do any lasting harm, once you get it to stop being damp. I've had that problem twice, once from a leaky shower and once from a slate off the roof, and both times it did that, alarmingly, and then when it dried out was unsightly but did not collapse or anything of that nature.

As for the tank, I don't know about Minneapolis, but here a whole new toilet only costs $100, so a new tank from the kind of shop like Home Depot (only nicer, I hope) would probably not be very much and be fairly easily swapped in. It wouldn't need plumbing -- the plumbing is there already, it would just be engineering.

Maybe you know someone who could fix it?

(We make jokes about small ads we would write if we were looking for another person: "strong wrists", "detailed knowledge of medieval weaponry", "good with plumbing", "Linux sysadmin experience an advantage"...)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

ooh. good point. i forget that not everyone wants the fancy kind. yeah, we were just at home depot, and they do sell toilets (none of which were the kind we wanted but were perfectly suitable for many many people) for less than $100.

it helps if you have a 12" roughin, though.

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Someone may just need to tighten the bolts that hold the tank down. (Or someone may have tightened them slightly too much, in which case you may need a new tank.)

[brooksmoses]

And "local". Don't forget that. :) I've got strong wrists (somewhat), am passably good with plumbing, and have a bit of Linux sysadmin experience, but none of it's good enough to do anything useful with long-distance.

It gets somewhat frustrating, in a way, reading things like this and your browser problems, where in both cases I'm fairly sure that with a couple of hours of hands-on poking I could fix the problem easily (overconfident, me? Never!), but there's nothing much I could do long-distance. Sigh. I want to be helpful!

I will note that it sounds to me more like a seal problem than a crack in the porcelean; you'd probably be able to see a crack if you looked closely. If it is a crack that you can see, drying it out and putting some epoxy on the crack should be a perfectly good fix (and, if it's not, there really isn't a good one without replacing the bowl).

[pameladean]

There, there. You are being helpful. You can't obviate the need for a plumber, and I can't shower you with shortbread or whatever in recompense, but I'm actually very grateful to this whole thread for confirming me in the belief that we should just call in an expert. Plumbing is not among our talents.

Pamela