- Image by tokyofortwo via Flickr
My toilet is saving me $1200.
For a long time, my toilet ran. It was a nearly steady stream of money slipping down the drain. I knew that replacing the flapper was a quick job, but it was easy to ignore. If I wasn’t in the bathroom, I couldn’t hear it. If I was in the bathroom, I was otherwise occupied.
When I finally got sick of it, I started researching how to fix a running toilet because I had never done it before. I found the HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter. It’s the magical push-button, two-stage flusher. Yes, science fiction has taken over my bathroom. Or at least my toilet.
I bought the dual-flush converter, which replaces the flusher and the flapper. It has two buttons, which each use different amounts of water, depending on what you need it to do. I’m sure there’s a poop joke in there somewhere, but I’m pretending to have too much class to make it.
I also bought the matching fill valve. This lets you set how much water is allowed into the tank much better than just putting a brick in the tank. It’s a much faster fill and has a pressure nozzle that lies on the bottom of the tank. Every time you flush, it cleans the inside of the tank. Before I put it in, it had been at least 5 years since I had opened the tank. It was black. Two weeks later, it was white again. I wouldn’t want to eat off of it, or drink the water, but it was a definite improvement.
Installation would have been easier if the calcium buildup hadn’t welded the flush handle to the tank. That’s what reciprocating saws are for, though. That, and scaring my wife with the idea of replacing the toilet. Once the handle was off, it took 15 minutes to install.
“Wow”, you say? “Where’s the $1200″, you say? We’ve had this setup, which cost $35.42, since June 8th, 2010. It’s now September. That’s summer. We’ve watered both the lawn and the garden and our quarterly water bill has gone down $30, almost paying for the poo-gadget already. $30 X 4 = $120 per year, or $1200 over 10 years.
Yes, it will take a decade, but my toilet is saving me $1200.
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Our guest bathroom toilet needed a new flapper and the base was rocking back and forth since we bought the house, so I paid a guy $100 on Labor Day to fix everything. No more running toilet and no more rocking. I don’t think it will save us anything since we barely used the thing and we’ve never had a water bill bigger than $30 ever, but I feel better having something off my house to-do list.
If it was running, you’re still going to save something.
I wish my to-do list was shrinking. I need to figure out where all of my spare time is going.
Yeah, I’ve been blowing off the chores in favor of blogging…there’s where most of my spare time goes.
Blogging beats chores any day. But don’t tell my wife I said that.
Good post – even without the poop joke! This is a good reminder of how little things can cost or save a lot of money. When you look back 10 years from now, you’ll be so glad that you spent those 15 minutes! Maybe you should put $30/quarter into an account and have fun with it in 10 years!
So far, we’re just pretending that money doesn’t exist. I’m not going to change that budget item until the bill has stabilized. For now, it’s a “cushion”.