When a simple DIY plumbing task isn’t what you bargained for
It took almost two months to really notice but the fill valve for my toilet had failed. I first noticed my water bill being about $20 more expensive than usual. I thought it odd, but figured it had been from us letting the water warm up for longer during the cold months or something. We have an old toilet and it typically takes a while to fill up, but it started taking longer and longer without me realizing it until one day it would not stop.
A toilet fill valve is marketed as an easy DIY plumbing fix. You shut off the water at the toilet, unscrew a couple of fixtures, put the new one in, screw what you unscrewed, and turn the water back on. Should be simple. I’ve fixed clogs, leaky bonnets, shower cartridges, &c. So I have been gaining confidence. Unfortunately, in this situation, our toilet didn’t have a modern, standard shut off valve or flex supply tube. It had a rigid chrome plated, brass supply line coming out directly from a nipple in the floor. The nipple is tied into the copper line of the house below. If I had known it was a simple nipple I probably would’ve given it a shot at unscrewing it myself. Unfortunately, I saw soldering and no shut off valve and figured it was out of my wheelhouse. I knew to replace this I would have to call my first plumber after two years in this house. But I had to try simply replacing the valve myself, I couldn’t stand listening to the non-stop trickle and knowing money was being wasted every second. Maybe I could put the proper shutoff/supply-line fix for another day.
Once I cleaned up this gunk that’s probably been here since the last moon landing I enlisted my brother’s help who’s much more handier than I with such things, and went to Home Depot and Lowe’s at least twice, bought at least three fill valves to try the different variations. They each had different fixtures in the bottom and I thought maybe that was my issue. The old one we pulled off seems to have a different kind of connection at the bottom the brass supply line was connected to and I thought I could simply just replace it but it turns out when you move stuff around that’s that old things just don’t go back the right way. We managed a reasonable fix with one of the valves, but kinked the line somewhere because it was flowing at a trickle.
The plumber I called said he’s been in the business for 45 years and I’m sure knows these sorts of houses like the back of his hand. Mentioned that my toilet was from the 60s, always impressed by knowledge like that. He simply sawed off the supply line, unscrewed the nipple it was tied into with relative ease and added the shutoff valve and flex tube. I immediately ran to Lowe’s to return one of the unused fill valves, and get a bidet, which has been missing from our lives the last two years ever since we moved in and I’m sad it took this long to get the toilet supply line replaced so we could finally enjoy a bidet once more.