Home is Where...

You comfortably do the most intimate and necessary thing

Home is where the heart is.

Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in. (so wrote Robert Frost)

These are great thoughts. Perhaps, even truths. And, I have another. Not as sentimental as the first or as passive as the second. Maybe not true for everyone, but certainly for me.

Home is where you poop.

Forgive me if this sounds crass because we all know the subject is taboo. Still, everyone poops.

This is a GREAT book, designed for potty training kids but fun for everyone. Later, two women published another picture book titled “Everybody Poops”, which seems like a rip-off of this original idea but honestly, I haven’t read it.

I’m not kidding. It really is difficult for me to poop anywhere but home. When I travel, I bring extra magnesium, triphala, and probiotics to help keep things moving. I make sure to drink even more water than normal. I practice spinal twists. I search for stools or wastebaskets or anything to lift my knees up when sitting on a foreign toilet.

I have gone camping for three days and only peed. But as soon as I get home, my body knows. It’s ready to eliminate.

I know I not the only one. I’m not the only one whose body is a bellwether for the degree to which I am feeling comfortable. The kind of comfort we associate with home.

But why am I writing about this?

Our toilet clogged up on Tuesday, after a weekend of eating more meat than I typically do in three months. A burger on Saturday, a friend’s beef stew on Monday, and an entire two-layer poppyseed cake in 2.5 days (a heavy cake, and, as Tom reminds me “those poppyseeds don’t digest”).

Remember how we installed a new bathroom in this house? With a sleek new one-piece skirted toilet AND a bells-and-whistles-$221 bidet seat? I LOVE this toilet seat. Primarily because it is heated. Especially in the winter or in the middle of the night, a heated seat is heaven. I also love the way the skirted toilet looks. Largely due to the ease of cleaning. No little crevices to gather dust and dirt. Looks aside, the toilet itself has been a disappointment. It hasn’t worked as I had hoped, hasn’t had the power of a dual flush that was promised. Turns out there was a reason for that, and it wasn’t the toilet’s fault.

Swiss Madison “Cascade” with an Alpha Bidet seat

Tuesday morning was the the third time we had a problem since installing our porcelain throne four months ago. Admittedly, as much as I use the bidet every time I go to the toilet, I’m not using only the bidet. Surely, I can be forgiven for using a few squares. There’s an air-dry feature on out bidet seat and… hey, I’m still an American in the U.S. Either I install another small towel rack and use a hand towel or I use a few small squares. Kirkland brand TP has, so far, dominated that dilemma.

Tom texted me at 4pm to say it was still clogged. By the time I got home an hour later, he was in the basement snaking through the pipes. He worked on our toilet and our pipes for hours. HOURS! When we went to bed at midnight, it still wasn’t working.

Remember, this is our only toilet. Other arrangements had to be made for elimination in the meantime. I won’t share specifics but peeing outside under the dark sky wasn’t an option – it’s about 11 degrees at night lately.

So, we called in a plumber. By then, Tom had cleared and cleaned the toilet, so the plumber wasn’t walking into a disaster. Ah, white porcelain, what a glorious sight! Two and a half hours later, here’s what we learned:

We need a new toilet.

This is the toilet we removed from the bathroom when we arrived in September. At least 20 years old and possibly 50.

Remember all that research I did when I had Covid in October? How much I learned about toilets and rough in sizes and flanges? Good news is that I wasn’t an idiot. I didn’t make a mistake. The flange was clearly meant to be for a 12” rough in. Except that it sat at 11 and 6/8” instead of at 12”. And that little bit made all the difference.

Our beautiful, sleek, skirted toilet was not sitting directly over the flange. Which meant the hole the waste goes through was almost half of what it should be. Plus the ceramic tile we installed on the bathroom floor meant the screws were too short. (A 1/4” tile is significantly higher than laminate.) Basically, the only thing keeping the toilet in place was the seal and the placement of the toilet which was, well, not fully on the floor. All of this also meant a hose at the back had been bent, leading to a small leak.

The plumber was emphatic that we NOT buy another skirted toilet. And not another one-piece. Nope. Our space is too small and tight. It’s back to the normal two-piece throne. Now, while you can get a 12” rough in 2-piece for around $100, 10” rough in toilets start at $250 on sale. (Compare that to the $260 we paid for our skirted modern one-piece 12” rough in. Groan.)

To further complicate matters – and this wasn’t determined by the plumber until about 90 minutes in, there was definitely something stuck in the porcelain. You’d think organic material would easily break down. Apparently not always. And then remember the size of the hole was partially obstructed because the flange wasn’t installed at the right distance. Logs are logs and if they catch sideways, they’re stuck. Oy.

Finally, we have galvanized steel pipes. In the 70s, everyone had galvanized pipes. It wasn’t until the 80s that PEX pipes came along. So, what’s the problem? Rust and lead. Think of it as stalagmites, the plumber said. A pipe filled with stalagmites and small bits of rust and lead are getting into the system. Even one small grain can seriously mess with the toilet’s diaphragm, causing it to clog.

The solution? “You need to replace all your pipes with PEX and install a full house filtration system.”

At this point I said, “Have you ever seen the movie Moonstruck? This is reminding me of Cher’s father, who is a plumber, and who tells a Manhattan couple that they need to replace all their pipes with copper.”

“There are three kinds of pipe. The first is the pipes you have, which are garbage. Then there’s bronze. Bronze is good until something goes wrong, and something always goes wrong. Then there’s copper. Copper is the only pipe I use. It costs more. It costs money because it saves money.” – Mr. Cosmo Castorini, Moonstruck

Our plumber didn’t laugh. He only said, “You can use copper if you want, but I recommend PEX. It’s better and it costs less than copper.”

Ok, so PEX it is.

The good thing is that our pipes are largely exposed. No breaking into walls. A days work, he said. Not replacing ALL the pipe, but at least the exposed pipe and that’s a huge chunk to make the difference we need.

Then there’s the full-house water filtration system, which will cost somewhere around $500. Not bad.

The really unexpected news is that we also need a new water heater. We haven’t had a problem – except that it leaks, but Tom put a bucket under it and, well, that seems to be fine. Apparently, it isn’t. The water heater is either from 1998 or 2000.

Back to the toilet: A 10” rough in is not standard. Stores don’t keep them in stock. If you are lucky to find one, it’s chair height. And with chair height, I need a stool. Not to get on the toilet, silly, but most certainly to use the toilet. The difference between 15” and 18” is a lot when it comes to elimination. At least for me it is.

yup, just your standard toilet. American Standard, in fact. "Top Rated" and still, just another regular-looking toilet

We ordered a new toilet this morning and now we wait two weeks for delivery and then installation. We plan to drink lots of water and eat lightly. The plumber got our current toilet to where it’s working, but, obviously, we don’t want to push our luck.

Tell me you toilet story. Even if it’s gross. It might make me feel better. What’s the worst problem you’ve ever had with a toilet? Or pipes? or yes, even pooping.