Toilets for Dummy DIY Plumbers

Where's the float, Novel?

We'll let you in on a little secret: one of the reasons we don't often feature HubPages.com content here at the Antisocial Network is that the content is too often so darned long we get tired of reading. Maybe Demand Media was right about their 300-word "sweet spot"! For "hubbies," as they call themselves, that verbosity can  be a problem: when you know little or nothing about a topic, the longer you talk the more likely you'll reveal your ignorance. That's exactly what happened with vanity publisher Novel Treasure and her magnum opus, "How does a Toilet Work – Toilet Basics 101."'

We clocked Novel's post in at 785 words, which we suspect was pretty much harvested from Wikipedia or a similar source (perhaps the Family Handyman). That Treasure never actually looked into the closest toilet is fairly obvious, since if she had she might have noticed that her list of the works inside the tank is... out of date:

"Float Ball... Refill Tube... Overflow Tube... Fill Valve (Ballcock)...Flapper"

We checked our local BigBox hardware, and we found that it's difficult to find a replacement float ball any more, since almost all toilet valves on the market have a self-contained  float instead of one of those football-shaped thingies. But that's not all: Treasure screwed up in some of her descriptions:

"Refill Tube: the tube connected to your water supply that fills the tank back up after each flush."

No, Novel, the supply tube is connected to your water supply. The refill tube shunts a portion of the water coming through the fill valve to the bowl while the tank is filling.

"Fill Valve (Ballcock): the valve that covers the refill tube."

It does a little more than "cover" the tube, Treasure: the valve opens to allow the tank to fill, and closes when the water level in the tank has reached the proper depth. It also shunts a little water through the refill tube and down the overflow tube to wash the sides of the bowl and refill it. With that out of the way, let's see now NovelTreasure thinks a toilet works:

"When the handle or button is pressed, this releases the flapper covering the inlet hole at the bottom of the tank. This allows the water from the tank to flush out of the tank and into the bowl. Some of the water goes down the refill tube to start refilling the tank, but the majority flushes into the bowl."

So much bull, so little time. First, the flapper covers an outlet, not an inlet. Second, none of the water in the bowl "goes down the refill tube to start refilling the tank." Water going through the refill tube is part of the water coming into the tank via the fill valve, and it's directed down the overflow tube to refill the bowl. And finally, Novel "informs" us that with each flush, "...water is sucked from the bowl through the S-curve plumbing and out through your sewage pipes..." ...thereby conflating siphoning gasoline out of Daddy's SUV with sewage exiting the house via gravity drainage: water is "sucked" into the sanitary sewer? Oh, HELL no!

Once again, a greedy freelancer shows that ignorance will out if you talk too much: "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt!" For her efforts, Novel Treasure is hereby named our Dumbass of the Day.

copyright © 2018-2022 scmrak

SE - PLUMBING