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I’ve been doing some thinking tonight and have come to the conclusion that all of the brilliant scientists out there concentrating on building faster microchips and laser-powered graphics cards (I am sure that somebody is working on this) need to drop what they’re doing and concentrate on overcoming the Next Great Technological Hurdle: plumbing fixtures.

The downstairs bathroom has been broken for months now, and tonight I decided to fix it. (With two other working toilets, do we really need a third operating?) The flush valve had gotten leaky, resulting in water leaking from the tank into the bowl. I decided to solve this problem by replacing the flush valve assembly, which then required un-bolting the tank due to the irregular shape of the new flush valve assembly. (I was hoping I could just sneak the new one in without this maddening step.) I soon found that one of the bolts wouldn’t come all the way undone, and so once I’d disconnected the water supply I tilted the tank to the side and put the new fittings in place underneath. And since I had everything apart, I decided to replace the fill valve, too.

Bolting the tank back down and reconnecting the water supply, I soon found three leaks. Here I am, in MMV — that’s 2005 in Roman Numerals — and replacing the guts of a toilet ends up being a two hour ordeal. I can understand expecting this kind of foolishness in the seventies — tighten the plastic fitting or else it will leak, but not too tight, or you’ll break it, and then it will really leak — but it’s the Twenty-First Century! Granted, I am young in my years as far as plumbing is concerned, and I’m sure Roto-Rooter would be happy to schedule an appointment for a chain-smoking fellow to come by on Thursday and charge $347.92 for the pleasure, but it seems to me that the Human Race should be past this by now.

Perhaps I should just pick up a few one-piece models, which might solve the issue with the internals — no more fooling with grimy bolts — but there’s still the water supply valve and the fittings themselves. I can only hope that the geniuses in the lab at American Standard are hard at work on some sort of quick-seal system that’s as reliable as the three-prong outlets that dot my walls. I can plug and unplug those all day, and not a single electron leaks out onto the floor. What gives, Moen?

Now that I think of it, I wouldn’t be too surprised if America’s powerful plumber’s union has been knocking off plumbing scientists in order to prevent these advanced new fitting technologies from coming to market. We need to get Stone Phillips on the case.

Posted: Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 10:25 pm; Category: Opinion; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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