We've come to take your toilet
September 24, 2021 2:48 PM Subscribe
plumbing adventures in the big apple My daughter had a similar experience last week so this kind of experience is apparently not that rare - the mind boggles...
Threadreader link for non-twitterati
Hope your daughter's situation resolved quickly, leslies -- that Twitter thread had a bit of an ominous close.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:46 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Hope your daughter's situation resolved quickly, leslies -- that Twitter thread had a bit of an ominous close.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:46 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't understand why he announced that he was "taking" the toilet before he diagnosed the problem first, but otherwise this looks familiar. They can't just let you keep leaking into your neighbors' ceiling and walls.
To diagnose, they smash a hole in your wall and/or floor, run some water, and look at it with a flashlight. In my building they didn't even clean up the rubble. I remember the super told us the leak in our drainline would take a few weeks to fix and "try not to use the sink," which we ignored.
posted by anhedonic at 3:48 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
To diagnose, they smash a hole in your wall and/or floor, run some water, and look at it with a flashlight. In my building they didn't even clean up the rubble. I remember the super told us the leak in our drainline would take a few weeks to fix and "try not to use the sink," which we ignored.
posted by anhedonic at 3:48 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
I thought it meant it whatever was going on in the apartment beneath was so bad, there was an immediate danger of ceiling collapse/the toilet falling through.
(Scavenger hunt list item #14: toilet from someone's apartment [hunt participant must take photo in bathroom as proof])
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
(Scavenger hunt list item #14: toilet from someone's apartment [hunt participant must take photo in bathroom as proof])
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
My daughter is moving - her building is slowly collapsing and they have had a series of plumbing leaks for the past year. Last week they had plumbers show up late at night to pull out sink pipes, get into a fight with the super over unpaid bills and leave after saying the original plumbing had been done so badly they'd have to rip the whole thing out (and did rip out a lot). The super showed up the next day with a screwdriver, claimed to fix it but they now how no hot water at the sink. Good thing they were already in the midst of packing!
posted by leslies at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by leslies at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
!!!
Holy crow, that is super suspect, and I'm glad she's already in the midst of moving on.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:31 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Holy crow, that is super suspect, and I'm glad she's already in the midst of moving on.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:31 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I had no idea Brazil was a documentary.
posted by bendy at 4:42 PM on September 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by bendy at 4:42 PM on September 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
This, except mine was the apartment underneath. It started at 9am -- if I hadn't been working from home my apartment would have been pretty much destroyed.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:54 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:54 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I was first going to say "I don't understand, this is what shutoffs are for, and why you have them both at the toilet hookup and in the basement per apartment," but it's Brooklyn, and this building might be getting hot water from an electric tea kettle in the basement.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 4:58 PM on September 24, 2021 [25 favorites]
posted by Jack Karaoke at 4:58 PM on September 24, 2021 [25 favorites]
From my cold, dead glands.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 5:02 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by thecincinnatikid at 5:02 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
Harry Tuttle wore protective gear (unlike the plumber pictured in that thread).
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:07 PM on September 24, 2021
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:07 PM on September 24, 2021
Could be worse, (barely):
The tilting on San Francisco's Millennium Tower is causing a plumbing problem
The tilting on San Francisco's Millennium Tower is causing a plumbing problem
...posted by sebastienbailard at 6:49 PM on September 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
In the email from Hamburger, obtained by NBC, the engineer told the city that “sewer lines must slope (minimum of 1/8” per foot) to enable efficient flow of material,” and that at-risk drains “will experience decreased slope and may become a problem.” He added that third floors drains that have seen plugging must be “maintained with periodic chemical flushing.”
I hope she keeps an eye on the plumbers, so they don't replace the toilet with one with a joke hole that's just for farts - a fart toilet.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:28 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Pronoiac at 8:28 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Shh, no spoilers for the new Super Mario movie
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:02 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:02 PM on September 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
In the last apartment I inhabited in town there was an intermittent leak in the bathroom ceiling. It baffled 2 plumbers but the third worked out that the bath outflow above could cope with a shower-trickle but not a tubful emptying. The joy of country living is that The Man taking the toilet would be mere inconvenience: so many shrubs in need of nitrogen.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:42 AM on September 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:42 AM on September 25, 2021 [1 favorite]
was first going to say "I don't understand, this is what shutoffs are for, and why you have them both at the toilet hookup and in the basement per apartment," but it's Brooklyn, and this building might be getting hot water from an electric tea kettle in the basement.
My biggest plumbing self-own was offering to replace a bathroom sink faucet for a friend in a suburban house that's < 40 years old. Reaching under the vanity, I had just enough time to think "wow, the shutoff is turning really easy" before the entire thing sheared off in my hand. I had to find the whole-house shutoff and call a plumber.
Not that it comes up often in my daily life, but right then and there I swore that I would spare no expense when it comes to shut offs. In order to prevent future catastrophe and spare future generations, I will always insist that only the highest quality shutoffs ever be installed.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:47 AM on September 25, 2021 [16 favorites]
My biggest plumbing self-own was offering to replace a bathroom sink faucet for a friend in a suburban house that's < 40 years old. Reaching under the vanity, I had just enough time to think "wow, the shutoff is turning really easy" before the entire thing sheared off in my hand. I had to find the whole-house shutoff and call a plumber.
Not that it comes up often in my daily life, but right then and there I swore that I would spare no expense when it comes to shut offs. In order to prevent future catastrophe and spare future generations, I will always insist that only the highest quality shutoffs ever be installed.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:47 AM on September 25, 2021 [16 favorites]
* grizzled, long-time New Yorker voice *
My hunch is that this is a building owned by a management company instead of just a single private owner. I live in the management-company kind of building now, and "the boss says we have to do this now, so we're going to do this now" sounds like exactly the kind of thing they'd do; the single-private-owner guy would have one super who'd get stuck with you on a game of phone tag trying to schedule things.
....My old apartment ceiling was also prone to leaking, but only because I was on the top floor. My building was like number 5 in a row of 6 brownstones all clustered on the block, and a kid who lived in another one would climb up the fire escape in his building with friends and they would use the roofs as their hangout - and the roof on my building wasn't as load-bearing as the others, so cracks from their feet lead to leaks during the next heavy rain. I think the landlord finally put a fence up there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:50 AM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
My hunch is that this is a building owned by a management company instead of just a single private owner. I live in the management-company kind of building now, and "the boss says we have to do this now, so we're going to do this now" sounds like exactly the kind of thing they'd do; the single-private-owner guy would have one super who'd get stuck with you on a game of phone tag trying to schedule things.
....My old apartment ceiling was also prone to leaking, but only because I was on the top floor. My building was like number 5 in a row of 6 brownstones all clustered on the block, and a kid who lived in another one would climb up the fire escape in his building with friends and they would use the roofs as their hangout - and the roof on my building wasn't as load-bearing as the others, so cracks from their feet lead to leaks during the next heavy rain. I think the landlord finally put a fence up there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:50 AM on September 25, 2021 [4 favorites]
Be careful out there folks! This is how you get land sharks!
posted by goingonit at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2021
posted by goingonit at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2021
I'm here to recommend 5-gallon bucket compost toilets. They work great. The plumbing is really simple. Humanure handbook for more info (scroll down).
posted by aniola at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by aniola at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh, that Maureen Johnson! I've read lots of her books, but a long time ago.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:28 PM on September 25, 2021
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:28 PM on September 25, 2021
« Older The Digital Death of Collecting | Mississippi John Hurt Video Collection Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by amanda at 3:45 PM on September 24, 2021 [2 favorites]