Maybe I celebrated too soon

I thought I had defeated the tenant's toilet. There was a small leak when I was done on Tuesday and I had plans to take care of it yesterday. I did some research online to get some ideas on what just might happen.

When I got upstairs last night the leak was worse than it had been the night before. My tenants had a couple towels on the floor and cup under the leaking valve. They mentioned they were running out of dry towels as they tried to keep up with the water.

Dry towels? Keep up with the water?

I took my wrenches and clamped them down on the valve. One trick was to simply tighten up the nut on top. I learned that it is not so uncommon to have these valves leak when they are turned off after being on for years at a time. You can tighten the nut by the handle to stop the leak. I did just that and it appeared to work. The leak slowed down quite a bit. I also closed the valve a bit and it appeared to be fine.

Then I found a note from my tenants this morning saying the leak was bad again and they were running out of towels. Again with the running out of towels. I am hoping that the note was meant for the previous night. That would not surprise me.

I stood there dumbfounded and thought about what I had observed the night before. They had a cup underneath the leak. Said cup probably holds about 16, maybe 20 ounces. Why not put a bucket or any other container underneath? Why towels?

As I thought about how clueless these people were, I then began to wonder why they just didn't turn the valve off? I'll bet that didn't even cross their mind to simply close the valve and shut the water off.

So I'll be back up there briefly tonight before taking care of it tomorrow. Glad I have the day off and can make one last run at it. I'd hate to try it fix it tonight, cause some serious damage and have an emergency plumbing job done.

One last thing. With all the squatting and bending I had to do to wrench the old valve out, it really stretched out some little used muscles in my legs and butt. I hate it when my buttocks hurt.