Save Money by Repairing Your Own Toilet

I don't know if we've got lousy plumbing or lousy kids, but our toilets get plugged a lot.  TMI?  Sorry, but we're dealing with real life here.  If we had to call a plumber every time our toilet became plugged, we'd have spent a small fortune on plumbing by now.  As it is, we have a serious toilet incident about once a week at our house.  And by serious I mean we tried to fix it with a plunger, and it didn't work.  In these circumstances, the toilet snake has been my best friend.

You can buy a toilet snake (also called a toilet auger) at the hardware store for about $10.  Here's a link to Lowe's if you want to go look.  It is basically a long spring that you twist down your drain and it pushes and pulls stuff out of your toilet.  It is super flexible so it can go around the S curves of your drain and move anything that's stuck.  There are lots of kinds, long and short, mechanical and manual.  I just have the cheapo basic, and it works great.





I considered including pictures showing how to use it, but first off, you don't want to see my toilets, and secondly there are a lot of great videos out there that will show you better than I can how to use it.  Here's a good one I found if you need directions on how to snake your toilet.

If the snake doesn't work, there is something else you can try.  It isn't an easy job, but it is doable.  And doing it yourself vs. paying a plumber will save you hundreds of dollars.  When my darling daughter was two, she had a fascination with the toilet.  One day she flushed a tooth brush down the toilet.  A toothbrush.  Of course it caught in the drain, too far back for me to reach, but no way was it going to make it around those S curves and go through on its own.  We tried snaking it, but it just wouldn't catch on the snake.  So we had to pull the toilet.  And by pull the toilet, I mean unscrew it and pick it up from the floor, tip it over, clean all the crap (literally) out of it, and then reseal it to the floor.  Three days later she dropped another toothbrush down the toilet, and we had to pull the toilet up and reset it again!  Thank goodness she was cute, or she may have been sold to the gypsies at that point.

It is not a beautiful thing to do.  It is gross, and it is heavy.  But I am a small person with zero upper body strength and I did it.  So you can too.  The only thing this project will cost you is a new seal to go on your floor.  They are $3-10 depending on the kind you get.  Every time I've reset a toilet, I've used a wax seal.  They are super cheap, but can be unforgiving, and cannot be reused.  You can also buy a rubber seal that is reusable, so if you don't get your toilet set just right the first time, you can try again.




Again, I'm not going to show you pictures of me doing this, mostly because I don't have a broken toilet, so I'm not going to take mine apart to show you how to do it.  I love you all, but not that much.  But there are plenty of great videos that will show you how to set a toilet, and here is one of them.

So why am I telling you this, if I'm just going to refer you to other websites to learn how?  Because, it's not just about teaching you how to do something.  It's about giving you the courage to try.  I am just a girl like you.  I possess no super powers or secret skills.  I am small.  I have super wimpy little biceps.  But I try.  I believe I can do big things, and so I do.  And I believe you can do big things too if you just try.  There are a lot of people out there who can demonstrate these skills a lot better than I can.  So go to Youtube and find the tutorial for whatever it is you want to learn, and learn it.  And know that I'll be cheering for you all the way!


Marcia


P.S. Please feel free to come back and show us your successes too!  We want to know what you can do.  Go girl power!
Or um, boy power.  But we're pretty sure you're mostly girls reading this. :)