My family still does Christmas lists and a couple years ago I was struggling to figure out what to put on mine. I ended up adding a few silly items – included a Dual-Flush toilet replacement kit. When installed, you can lift the handle up for a 1/2 flush (using less water) or down for a full one.
Perhaps not surprisingly, my folks bought this for Christmas for me. I was delighted and eager to give it a try, but when I opened up the box it seems way more complicated than the packaging suggested.
I set it aside for Another Day (™) and figured I’d get around to installing it eventually.
Fast forward to a few days ago when the upstairs toilet continued to run after flushing. Ah, the perfect opportunity and no excuses – it was time to install the Dual-Flush replacement kit and save the damn planet. One flush at a time.
I took off the lid of the tank with practiced ease and then turned off the water. One good flush and I had a nearly empty tank. I skimmed the instructions to see what tools I needed and there were only two.
A sponge
And a pencil
Really?
The pencil was to mark the water line before draining the tank – so, I’d already screwed that up. The sponge was to finish getting all the water out of the tank. So, I got a bucket and sponge and got the rest of the water out. Then while it was drying, I read a little more about removing the old system.
It was basically everything except the flapper and so I set to work removing the various parts until I had damp pile of plastic pieces on the floor in no particular order. I was going to throw these out, right?
Back to the directions and things got a little worrying. There were a couple of pieces in the tank that were sealed in and not coming out without a fight – or being broken. And the pictures of Steps 1 and 2 were not matching up.
I had myself a sit and studied this directions more carefully before I broke anything. And, to my chagrin, there was a section neatly labeled “incompatible”. And one of those looked an awful lot like my tank set up.
I checked the parts and sure enough, the brand name matched with the “incompatible” label.
So, this new dual flush thing wasn’t going to work – and I had a floor covered in pieces of the old system.
This might be a good time to mention that I’m not a plumber.
Fortunately, I realized that there was only one of every piece and they could only go together in one way in the tank, With a little trial and even less error, I got everything put back into place and turned the water back on. And then I flushed the toilet.
Everything worked – though it still kept running when it was done. On the plus side, I had noted another way to adjust the float – so, I’ll get that worked out over time.
Just in case, I checked the downstairs toilet and it has the same setup. Not surprising.
The final verdict is that I’m no worse off than when I started.
And for plumbing, that’s a win.