Homeowner's hack

I always love a good hack. So, when the toilet in our main floor bathroom kept running because of a bad gasket I thought it would be the perfect time to hack it with one of these inexpensive dual flush retrofit kits (the MJSI HYR270 HydroRight to be exact). You see these kinds of dual flush toilets more often in other countries - they have a small flush for #1 and the full flush for #2. Of course, after it arrives from Amazon I realize that my Mansfield toilets have some crazy non-standard flush valve which are not compatible with this kit (or any of the others like it). At this point Lorrie laughs about me and the package that boldly proclaims:

 Installs on any toilet without tools in 5-10 minutes!

After a quick trip to Lowes I return with a new flush value, which unfortunately requires you to remove the tank from the toilet base to install. My most clever insight of the night was to use the pneumatic pump for bleeding car brakes to pump the residual water from the tank that is left after you turn the water off and flush it. This meant no leakage when I loosened the bolts to take the tank off from the base. Both the flush valve and the retrofit kit were pretty easy to install from that point on. After a couple of minor adjustments to get the water levels for the two stages right, we were good to go. Total time was more like an hour and 10 minutes (not including the trip to Lowes). Not too bad for something that could reduce water usage by 30%. We'll try it out for a while, and if it holds out the other toilets in the house just might get the same install.

Here's to water conservation!

Post Script: As I'm writing this we're having a thunderstorm and the power flickered off. No worries! My servers and other computers kept right on humming because of those new UPSs I mentioned in the last post. Cool.