Really. When you do your own repair, you get to be quirky:
1952 toilet (the date of manufacture is stamped inside the tank), 2010 push button. Fun, no?
I did this repair a couple of years ago, but decided that I’d post it, just to round out the recent plumbing series.
Related: The Kitchen Sink, Sinking, Not Sewing , and Plumb Done
So you had suggested buying a snake to clean the drain, but I didn’t want to go to the hardware store. So I googled something like “clean hair out of sink drain” and one of the results mentioned cutting apart a wire coat hanger and bending the end to form a hook to pull the hair out. I happened to have some heavy floral wire, the extra heavy duty kind, so I bent the end into a hook and went fishing down the drain. At one point the hook got stuck and I thought, um, I’m going to have this huge piece of floral wire stuck out of my drain for the rest of my life, but finally I got it to come out. Then it got stuck again and I sweated through that some more until it finally came out. After removing the trap I used the wire to scrape up into the inside of the drain pipe.
What really made me laugh is after I had done the drain cleaning two years ago, I left the bucket under the trap because I was super afraid I did a bad job and it would start leaking…and then a few months ago I was wondering where I put that bucket…when I finally discovered it was hidden behind all the junk under my sink, and still had the gloves I used last time inside. The floral wire is now in that bucket as well, ready for the next attempt. 🙂
The problem with the button on top is now it’s getting in the way of putting stuff on top of the toilet tank, like the box of tissues in your shot. 🙂
Anyway, I enjoy your plumbing stories, keep them coming!
That is a hoot–I don’t think I’ve seen a push button toilet in the US. Just in England, and the button was on the top as I recall.. I wonder how that all works with the button as I also replaced the handle/arm lever mechanism in one of my toilets a few months back, but with a standard handle where the act of pushing down on the lever is actually yanking the chain and pulling up the flapper.
I am still in awe of your huge sink repair!
I fixed the clog in my sink last weekend. I used a piece of heavy floral wire to fish the hair and gunk out of the drain, and I also took apart the trap and cleaned the gunk out of that and as much as I could scrape out of the drain pipe. It is such a joy to have a fast draining sink again, and to do it myself. But it was pretty easy compared to your huge sink repair. I tip my hat to you!
How funny, Kyle! I just left a comment on your blog (I am SO far behind on blog-reading!) only to open my email and find you’d just left one here. Floral wire? I LOVE the idea of this as a plumbing tool — after all, most of us have this kind of crafty thing hanging around, right???
PS – the funny thing about my push-button is that the mechanism inside is exactly the same as the USA standard. But you know I’m really dreaming of the European “button-on-the-top” model!
You have a plumbing series. 😀