June 22, 2026

The Joy of Learning

As an experimental physicist, I designed and built vacuum and gas handling systems.  I’ve also had a fascination with flowing water since childhood.  With both of these, it’s strange that I’ve done as little real plumbing as I have.  My house has two bathrooms.  The downstairs toilet had been leaking for years.  Well, intermittently.  I had believed, correctly as it ends up, I could have fixed it.  However, rust from my water finally clogged the upstairs toilet in a way that wasn’t amenable to a quick fix.  

I don’t know how old the toilets were when I moved in, but that was twenty-two years ago.  Been a while.  The almost trivial solution--in math the trivial solution is f(x)=0--was to buy two new toilets.  The mathematical version gets you nothing.  New toilets, on the other hand, should make life far simpler than it has been in recent memory.  And with a house and call it fifteen years of problem free living, the $500/each plus installation was an easy decision. 

I also quickly discovered that installing a toilet is relatively easy.  Checking with others, I verified that.  And the worst case would be a failure and then calling a handyman in.  It was clear that this didn’t need a full on plumber. 

I ordered a pair of Toto Drake toilets through Lowe’s.  I would pick them up in Missoula.  The first pair were broken during shipping.  That alone justified the drive to Missoula when they arrived.  The other reason was to make sure I got the items I needed.  For these it was a plastic gasket for each toilet.   At ten dollars each, they were several times the cost of the old style wax gasket.  They were the “expensive” solution.  Pa Loveman would be happy to see that I consider the absolute cost when evaluating anything.  Where we are/were different is he enjoyed the process of bargaining.  I never have.  What I do as well as he did is making sure I get a good price. 

Of course, it’s misleading to say I drove to Missoula to pick up the toilets.  I also picked up trail shoes at REI, a new GPS from Sportsman’s Wearhouse—mine was damaged, dogfood, and groceries.  The toilets came first.  My Crosstrek actually has a lot of room with the second seat down, but one doesn’t know without the measurement.  The four boxes containing the toilets went in easily.  And the heaviest box was something I could handle by myself.  That was a combination of its weight, 63 lb., and the fact that the box had good handholds for lifting.  It was a given that I could fit the GPS and the trail shoes.  The dogfood and groceries weren’t. 

That was Friday.  Saturday I played around. On Sunday, I put in the downstairs toilet.  Another thing I anticipated was there were a bunch of tools I had damaged—a nasty leak of epoxy hardener in a toolbox---or lost.  Four crescent wrenches, four vice grips, and a full set of standard wrenches with imperial sizes later, I was ready to rock and roll.  I had previously picked up putty knives to replace ones I had lost and had bought both metric and imperial socket wrench sets last fall to deal with gooped up tools.

I tried for more than an hour to take out the rusted screw that held the tank to the toilet. After this, I decided to see if I could just move the toilet and tank together.  The two screws that held the toilet in place were also rusted.  However, the vibrations from a reciprocating saw shook them free.  I can still dead lift over 100 lb, the combined weight of the toilet and tank.  Cleaning the wax off the old flange then installing the new toilet had minor issues but the videos I had found were accurate.  I had a fully working toilet by midnight. The only real cursing was while I moved the old toilet to my woodshed.  My solution for that was using a cold chisel which, of course, did nothing to the screw but did destroy the ceramic holding the toilet and tank together. 

With this, including an option to destroy ceramic, it was a pleasant surprise to have both screws holding the tank to the upstairs toilet come out easily.  The big problem for the downstairs toilet was a non-issue for the upstairs toilet.  I told myself this one would be easy.  Too loudly.  Never challenge the gods. 

The reciprocating saw didn’t shake anything free.  It did work in the way I originally thought about, sawing through nuts.  Lifting the toilet without the tank was easy.  However, the flange was different from the downstairs toilet.  It also had a plastic gasket, not wax.  I had assumed flanges were indestructible.  Ends up they’re not.  In trying to just remove a layer off of the flange I pulled the flange itself.  That entailed bending the crap out of it.  It didn’t take long to realize what I had done.  The surprise was the piece of plastic that ran over the drainage pipe itself was unscathed.  Off to the local hardware store to get a new flange.  I should add that having an Ace Hardware store in Seeley Lake was a good thing. 

I bought two flanges.  One had a plastic piece and one didn’t.  The plastic piece was nominally designed so as to remove a cap easily.  Tap with hammer then pull with pliers.  Eventually I brought out my chisel, but still made no progress.  What I had, however, was the plastic from the old toilet, a brand spanking new flange—I felt really good about spending the extra nine dollars---and a good set of screws to secure the new flange to the floor.  With this, the gods seemed satisfied that I had learned my lesson.  Screwing the flange to the floor and the toilet to the flange went smoothly.  And had I noticed that the too short input line was screwed to the valve, not a solder joint, I would have had two working toilets that night.   I did the next morning. 

In the end replacing the toilets took about five hours apiece.  That excludes the trip to Missoula and multiple trips to Seeley Lake, proper.   But that was facilitated by several videos.  I wasn’t able to use bolt cutters for anything.  On the other hand, my reciprocating saw let me deal with the screws holding toilets to flanges.  And I did need flat vice grips to hold screws as I cranked on nuts.  Next time a lock washer will do the same.  And, of course, a standard wrench with the correct size works better than a crescent wrench.  That wasn’t new.  In the end, the real reason I’m happy is I enjoy learning anything.  Still.  And that includes how to install toilets.