Plumbing 101

I live in the country right outside of Fresno with my girlfriend Gianna and my little brother Rob. It's an old house, and we've had our share of plumbing problems.

A few weeks right after we moved in, there was a problem with how the toilet flushed, so Gianna's cousin Josh (who works with us at Intervault decided to take a look. He opened up the cover and WHAM! dropped it right into the bowl. The porcelain cracked and water got all over the place. A huge mess. He said he could try to epoxy it... not a chance.

Enter Gianna's other cousin, Joey. He gets a new toilet, spends a few hours cursing at the nuts and finally gets the thing installed. Thanks Joey. No more problems, right? WRONG!!!

Today Gianna comes out of the bathroom and complains that it's leaking. I go in there and there's a little bit of water around the base of the toilet. There was a little leak coming out of the adjustable pipe connecting the angle valve and the ballcock. I messed with it a bit and the leak got REALLY bad.

So that's when I found this site : Toiletology.com. After following the directions, I think I've got a handle on how to fix this bad boy. So now it's off to the hardware store to get a new angle valve and adjustable pipe, and a long-ass monkey wrench so I can bust this nut from the valve. By ten o'clock, we'll either have a working toilet or a flooded bathroom.

If all goes well, maybe I'll give up poker and start life anew as a plumber. From all the movies I've seen featuring plumbers, the job would seem to have some pretty good fringe benefits.