I've been having fun "fixing" our toilet which wouldn't flush anymore
After screwing around with it all day, I decided just to oder a "universal" kit to replace everything inside the tank. I had already bodged a new refill valve and hacked it in to work a few years ago.
First problem is our downstairs toilet is more like a cupboard its that's small. So gymnastics was required to even get behind the toilet. I needed the tank fully. But of course it was bolted down.. Since it's been there since 1986 the bolts were just a blob of rust sadness.
No worries I thought as I bought a new dermel set a few years back. First cutting wheel was blunt but I had spares.. I then spent about half hour trying to undo the wingnut by the power of swear. But later tried heating it up with my gas soldering iron but gave up and went back to cutting.
About a hour past as was getting nowhere fast. The dremel was getting to hold to hold it was burning my hands!! Then the shaft decided to turn into a half molten mess and fell off. No worries as I had others.. Several other shafts later.. Was getting a bit annoyed. They snapped in 2 seconds so I kept having to untangle myself out of the room to change them..
About 3 hours later I managed to get the tank off. Fitting the new bits was some sort of un-comprehensible nonsense. To make matter worse. The new flush mech was a tiny bit longer than the old one. It didn't fit flush to the bottom of the tank. I upped it with using the old a new washer to give it more clearance. Went outside, filled it full of water, thing was leaking out of everywhere and the flush still didn't bloody work!!
The main problem so far was I had to turn off the house mains water to i late the toilet. Stupid it didn't have a tap. I guess the house builders didn't care as it was right next to the master valve anyway. So I HAD to get it fixed because the house was without water.
By this time it was about 5pm. Had some food. Decided to start over. I 3D printed a big spacer and made it 7mm high. I put that under the flush mech with a couple of rubber washer to seal and lift the hole thing up so it would clear the tank sides. I also put a thin layer of silicon sealant on it all for good measure.
Put the tank back on the toilet and filled it slowly with water. No leaks now. The flushing started to now work!
The water level was to high. So started to adjust it and BOOM. The refill valve blew apart in a explosion of water in my face. Now the room is underwater. I am soaked and so are the wall.
I then spent a hour trying to figure out what the hell just happened. I can only assume the defill valve wasn't tightened up "out of the box".. But wait there's more..
Somehow in the explosion a rubber washer vanished. It wasn't anywhere. Trying to figure out how to reassemble the valve was worthy of the krypton factor. No instructions at all. We found a video on YouTube which gave us some clues which showed where the washer should be..
I had a couple of universal washers kits. So tried a lot until I found one which worked. Now it's all back together I've now found there's a low pressure and high pressure nozzels for the refill valve. We only had 2 low pressure nozzles. Which were being used on a high pressure water mains. Which was probably a key factor why the whole thing exploded.
So currently it's all back together. The master tap is turned on only a tiny bit. It can be Mondays problem now. While I can buy other nozzles, I'm going to to print a insert reducer rather than use the high pressure nozzle. Why? Because the high pressure nozzle has a smaller hole which gets forced against a rubber washer. I'd be happier having the larger hole for the contat area and just have a reducer inside the nozzle to reduce the water flow.
So while the thing exploded and flooded the toilet room out. I think I'm getting the hang of it all now..
