Plumbing problems
The Toto toilet in the hall bathroom has been leaking for a while and I finally decided to act on it after seeing our last water bill (it was more than double the prior bill!) The issue was a faulty fill-valve. I ordered a replacement Wednesday, rush order - overnight for extra $6. I received the valve Thursday evening and proceeded to install. OMG - the toilet is one of the long ones and its almost smack up against the wall. There is no room to get your hand or any tool back there to un-couple the water supply from the old fill-valve! I ended up taking the tank off the bowl and replacing the fill-valve and the water supply connections before re-seating the tank on the bowl. This meant that the tank-to-bowl gasket had to be re-seated - BUT - that gasket, as well as any other rubber based material in the toilet, was showing signs of decomposition due to the chlorine in the water (I suspect). In any case, the leaf from the fill valve was fixed but then there was a leak from the tank to the floor! I searched online and found a
local store that had a replacement for the tank-to-bowl gasket. I removed the tank again and installed the gasket. I wanted to use new tank bolt gaskets too, but the kit I got didn't have the right size gaskets. Well, partial success. The leak slowed down, but now I noticed that the flapper vale was also leaking. So i got a new flapper valve and installed it. That fixed the leak into the bowl from the tank, however, the leak from the tank to the floor was only partially "healed". Katherine gave me the news that there was still a slow leak from the tank to the floor on Saturday. I looked online for the correct tank-bolt gaskets and found a
place in CA that sold them - but they are back-ordered - possibly for a week! In the meantime we are just going to have to turn off the water to the toilet between flushes. Sigh. I hate plumbing.
For the record, here is some info on the toilet and parts:
toilet: Toto "pacifica" model ST804S
replacement fill-valve:
TOTO TSU99A.X Universal Fill Valve
replacement tank-to-bowl gasket:
9BU024E
Tank to Bowl Mounting Kit: TS810DV2
City beets!
I finally harvested the beets from my raised beds down in the city (Silver Spring, really a suburb). I just picked and cleaned them off a bit then left for the farm. Katherine cooked, diced, and vacuum packed and froze them. I estimate she did about 2 quarts.
Caramel apple jam
I went up to the farm late Friday because of the above toilet issue.
I was pretty tired after the long 3 hour drive, eventually recovered enough to try a recipe for caramel apple jam. I peeled and chopped 6 cups of York apples (some of mom's I picked last weekend). I followed a
recipe that seemed to be fairly popular on the web (I should have read more of the reviews first, in retrospect! )
Anyway, I found that I needed to add more water to the first step (cooking the apples), as many people had commented in the recipe reviews. Also, very subjective as to when the apples are boiling because even with an extra .5 C water you are still looking at a fairly dry mass of apples! I did the pectin thing and canned and water bathed the half pint jars 12 min. I got 8 pints from the recipe. I tasted a little that remained and was not impressed. Nothing caramel about the taste! I must have messed something up because the jam did not set! Well, some didn't. Some jars seem more set than others! Weird. I'm thinking I might puree this stuff up with some apples and put it in dehydrator to make a apple-leather. Not a recipe to repeat!
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| 8 half-pints |
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| Obviously, this did not set correctly! |
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