Plumbing Tip 101

So for the last couple of days my toilet has been like overflowing- but like out of the top of the tank. Like from under that heavy cover lid thing.  Not like a flood but a decent sized puddle. At first I ignored it and expected it to fix itself. But soon I realized that plumbing is not like a car or electronics or a terminatrix. It doesn't just 'fix itself'. Once something is broke with plumbing- it stays broke.

Usually I'd just call my landlord to tell him that the toilet is broke but he's on vacation. So I just ignored it. I guess I could've called a plumber but then I'd have to pay for it and like get reimbursed from the landlord or whatever. That seemed like a pain. Plus I was going under the assumption that the problem was temporary. But it wasn't. If anything it was flooding a little more on every flush.

Finally I got the motivation to actually take a look inside the top of the tank and try to be all plumber like and fix it. Of course once I took the lid off and looked in- I was confused. I had no idea what was going on in there. I poked at the bobbing rubber thing. It seemed to bob ok. Then I pulled up a little on a metal bar and let it go. I saw it could flush the toilet if it wanted. That was kinda cool. I got a little fascinated with how a toilet works but didn't really understand it all. I poked at the bobbing thing again. Still bobbing. I looked at this chain thing and pulled on it a little. And then stopped doing that. I looked at this unimportant looking rubber tube like hanging out. And wiggled it. Then stopped wiggling it. Then I just stared at the inner workings and zoned out- I guess expecting to get some toilet fix epiphany or something.

Then the phone rang and it broke me out of my zoneout. I answered the phone and it was a friend of mine and he asked what I was doing or whatever. Although he's not even close to being plumbarily inclined I told him about the toilet situation and he immediately said take that loose rubbertube thing and put down into the metal tube thing. I did that. The weird unimportant tube had somehow popped out of the bigger tube! I flushed the toilet. Problem solved! I was shocked. I couldn't believe that he knew what the problem was. How the hell did he know that? So I asked him, 'How the hell did you know that?'

He told me that a few weeks ago he paid a plumber $125 to do that.

Plumbers got it made! So I case this is a common type problem so I worked up a little diagram so y'all can fix stuff if your run into the same problem: (Sorry plumbers)

ok bye!

tOdd