This was an incredible weekend. We took the RV out, not far from home, and camped at a local RV Park. We had a great time at the place called Sycamore Ranch RV Park. While we were there my wife and I were talking about her parent's home in NE PA, and she told me that for as long as she remembered the toilets flushed really slowly. Here's why we were talking about this:
Just before we left for our short trip we were about to launch into a money venture to replace our toilet. For the last few weeks the toilet was really slow to flush. We'd push the handle and the bowl would fill (not even close to over filling) and it left behind (no pun intended) a little bathroom tissue. We could fill a bucket with water and the toilet had no problem getting rid of everything in the bowl. So I called a local plumber "Todd's Plumbing" that I met a couple weeks back, and he told me it was the toilet. He said there are small holes under the lip of the bowl and if they become plugged then the toilet just can't produce enough volume to clear the bowl. He went on to tell me that if he can dump a 5-gallon bucket of water into the toilet and the toilet can keep up, then it's the toilet and not something down stream.
So I took a look. I got a mirror and found the small holes under the lip of the bowl, but I also found there are three large, quarter-sized holes in the front of the bowl. Their job is to push a large volume of water into the bowl towards the back of the toilet in order to get it moving down the pipe. Guess what else I found? A piece of one of the chlorine tablets we had placed into the tank about a month ago. Apparently it had broken up a little and some of the tablet got into the lip and couldn't get out; but it did disrupt the flow and the toilet couldn't produce enough thrust to get the bowl water moving. I crushed it up and our toilet worked great! Saved some money, and saving money is great!
What's my point? Don't let your clients ignore a home inspection. The small things an inspector finds on an inspection may be just that--SMALL! or just a piece of clorine tablet wedged in the toilet! :-) Enjoy your week.
Greg Scheer
www.GCSHomeInspections.com
gregory.scheer@gmail.com
530-455-5130
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