Plumbers

I wrote earlier about our leaky toilet. The plumber had told us to buy a part and he would come back to install it. Unfortunately, every time we called the municipal plumbers, we would learn that all plumbers were chopping icicles from rooftops or, later, in training.

Exasperated, I finally decided to install the part myself. I am not put off by the idea of installing toilet parts because I’ve done it numerous times and have a good idea how everything in an American toilet works. The plastic assembly we bought, however, came from Russia and didn’t look familiar at all. It has an amazing number of moving parts and fragile-looking appendages. Inconveniently, the multi-page instruction manual was written in Russian. I never seriously considered reading the directions because I figured that learning a whole new vocabulary including words like “float valve” and “adjustment armature” would be way more trouble than benefit.

Installing a flush valve in this toilet involves removing the tank from the bowl and disconnecting the old drain. The mechanisms are too complicated and non-standard to allow customers to buy a generic mechanism to mount on a generic drain as an American handyman might do. I took the toilet apart and installed the new mechanism without much trouble. Next I fiddled with the various things that appeared to be adjustable until I got it to fit and function in our toilet. After less than an hour, I enjoyed the illusion of success.

Unfortunately, I very soon realized that the new flush valve leaked, though not as much as the old one. I fiddled and experimented, and finally decided that our Russian flush valve was the piece of trash one of the sales guys had warned us about when he tried to sell us a more complex valve from Poland.

Exasperated, I planned to buy a new valve, and was pleased to discover another plumbing supply store next door to the office where I was continuing my bureaucratic battle to be registered in Minsk. We stepped in to buy whatever flush valve they had with real rubber at the bottom. I was dissuaded, however, by a private plumber who overheard us and swore that our Russian valve really would work with enough fiddling. I had already done all the fiddling he described, but was gullible enough to take the toilet apart two more times today and I actually did reduce the dripping, probably by accident.

I didn’t really intend to do today’s repairs myself, but decided I had little other choice once I learned that no plumber in Belarus drives around in a vehicle with spare parts and that any effort to call a plumber was likely to result in another consultation fee and a new shopping list for me to fill. Brilliantly, then, I spent time fiddling around with a lousy valve that I still ended up ready to replace.

I am remembering wistfully the simple Czech valve we saw a week ago before I knew what I was doing. I wonder if I can still get one.