The Toilet Flood

Another story that happened several years ago. I thought it was worth bringing up again though.




Here's my story: I got back home tonight. I was gone for just over a week because I spent Christmas break at my parents' house. I brought back with me a bag full of dirty laundry. At about 8:30 tonight, I put my dirty laundry in the washing machine. No big deal, right? That's what I thought too . . .

About 9:00 or so, I just happened to be near the bathroom and I heard water splashing around. That immediately concerned me, because I live alone. Unidentified bathroom noises (UBN's for short) don't happen all that often around here. In fact, they never happen. If there are strange noises in my bathroom, I usually know the cause. Anyway, I went in to investigate the cause of these UBN's. I saw something that I have never seen before. Are you all familiar with Old Faithful? Well, my toilet had an identity crisis tonight. It thought it was a junior version of Old Faithful. Water starting splashing up and around and over and under and through (feel free to fill in your favorite preposition here). It wasn't shooting up extremely high. It's just that when water is shooting up from a toilet, it’s an unusual sight, regardless of how high it's shooting. The toilet was also filling very quickly with water. Luckily, though, Old Faithful soon relaxed and the water stopped filling at the rim of the toilet. The water was soapy, so I immediately realized that the washing machine had drained and the water was somehow going to the toilet. I have no idea why or how, but that was my conclusion. I was sort of concerned, but I thought that it would go down by itself. I hoped, at least.

I was wrong.

I went back a few minutes later to see how Old Faithful was doing. Unfortunately, nothing had changed. Some of the suds had diminished, but that was it. It was still pretty full. It was at this point that I noticed my bathtub. It was full about 2/3 of the way to the top with dirty, soapy water. I started laughing (out loud) at that. I don't know why, but that just struck me really funny. My washing machine had drained into the toilet and the bathtub, and the water wasn't going down! It was quite a predicament that I had found myself in. Plumbing is not exactly my strongest area. In fact, it ranks pretty close to the bottom of my skills. I decided to start bailing out some of water from the toilet, in case more water decided to make its residence there. I had a little bucket and starting scooping dirty washing machine water from my toilet into the sink. I then did something that, looking back, was really stupid.

I flushed the toilet.
And I shouldn’t have.

I don’t know why I did that. I know that I said that I didn't know much about plumbing, but I do know enough to know that if your toilet is all the way full, you don't want to flush it. I guess I was just hoping that I could flush away my problem. The water all went down, luckily. But Old Faithful was NOT happy. It starting filling up with a vengeance. And it wasn't going to stop this time. I had pushed my luck (along with the little flush thingy), and I was going to have to pay this time.

The race was on! I frantically began to bail out the water from the toilet, knowing that if I didn't bail faster than Old Faithful was filling, then I would have a flooded bathroom. I was putting the water in the bathtub (which was pretty full already), since it was closer than the sink. So here I am splashing water all over the place, scooping, dumping, scooping, dumping, scooping, dumping, scooping, dumping . . . and getting nowhere. The water was coming out very quickly, and I was scooping and dumping just as quickly, but I was getting tired. I was also beginning to realize the futility of my fight. I couldn't win this battle. The bathroom was going to flood. There was no way around it. Either I give up and the toilet floods, or I keep going and flood the bathtub with the toilet water instead.

I decided to try to see if I could get the water to stop coming out. But to do this, I would have to stop scooping and dumping. And if I stopped scooping and dumping, the water would run out onto the floor. I did what I had to do though, and stopped scooping and dumping for a second to take the lid off of the tank. That was all it took. Old Faithful took advantage of this opportunity to flood its banks.

So there I was, standing on wet carpet, watching the water flowing overboard and also trying to figure out how to get this water to stop. I pulled up on this thing that had a big black ball-type-thing on the end, and the water stopped! However, as soon as I let go, the water came out again. At this point, though, I noticed my toilet brush sitting next to my toilet. So like a Medieval Knight piercing a dragon's heart, I bravely plunged the toilet brush underneath the black-ball-thing.

The water stopped.

So, as of right now, round one is officially over. The scoreboard reads Old Faithful, 1; Brian, 1. The toilet did flood, but I had a secret weapon: the toilet brush.

The game is not over yet though. I'll keep you posted . . .