Ahhhh, nothing like waking up, walking down the hall and smelling the glorious stench of raw sewage. That’s exactly how I spent the first few minutes of my morning. My house was built in the early 1950s and the drains for the shower can be accessed through a panel in our hallway. As I walked past that little door this morning I was inundated with the oh so pleasant smell of garbage and sewage water.
So, what’s a girl to do but call the plumber and hope for an easy and not too expensive solution. Before calling the plumbers I noticed that the room beneath that bathroom had some water damage in the ceiling. Hooray, hooray we’ll fix the bathroom issue and then fix the damaged plaster.
The plumbers came out about an hour later and explained that a rickety old toilet may be the culprit. They pulled the toilet back from the floor and showed me how all of the parts in my 50 year old toilet had rusted out. They further explained that the toilet was barely holding onto the floor and that the hole to the sewage line was exposed whenever the toilet shifted about on the one screw that seemed to keep it bolted in place.
The fix $300 to $400. My suggestion to go ahead and replace the ancient commode another $600 after parts and labor. $900 later I am now the proud owner of a newly installed toilet. The plumbers took their money and happily offered to return if any other problems arose.
Well I’m afraid to say I just wondered upstairs and noticed that the stink of sewage is not dissipating. I now wonder if the toilet was not causing the water damage or stench in my home after all. Let’s hope another call to the plumbers is not required tomorrow.
Ouch.
Really, that is a fix you could maybe do yourself–I have a rental house and have now replaced in it, and where we live 3 toilets by myself, without a man. Bought the toilet at Lowes for $300, paid the guy next door $10 to help me get it into the house (Lowe’s loaded it for me into my truck). Once you do the first one, its easy–just some muscle and a few tabs of perfume under your nose to block any nasty smells.
Good for you. I am very impressed. I thought about doing it myself, but with a little one running underfoot these days I decided to let the experts finish the job for me. The stench was pretty horrific. I was wondering how those guys deal with that stink day after day. I suppose their noses adjust to it. The perfume trick seems like it would definitely be required for the rest of us š
Ouch, and ew to the smell!
I’m sure you paid all that money for labor because it was an emergency type job since you called today and had it replaced…if it was planned that you wanted to replace the toilet, I’m sure it would have been cheaper.
But I’m sure it also takes time for the smell and all to dissipate….keep us posted! And hopefully you watched them so you can write a blog teaching us how to fix and install a new toilet š
It wasn’t an emergency fix so they didn’t charge more for that. They said that only happens at night and on weekends.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to watch them install. They were unbelievably quick and I was feeding my son at the time. I did watch some youtube videos after the fact though and it does seem relatively easy to do.