We had a strange thing happen the other day. I think it was Tuesday evening. I went upstairs to use the washroom and I noticed that the toilet barely had any water in it. Hmmm that was odd. Then I turned on the bathroom faucets and they worked, water poured out of them.
I thought oh no! We’ve got some kind of problem with our toilet. The last thing I wanted to have to do was call a plumber.
So I took the lid off the toilet tank to have a look inside and there was no water inside. I tried flushing the toilet to see if that would trigger the tank to fill up and it didn’t. At that point I was calling Chris to come upstairs and have a look.
Meanwhile I was also looking for the little knob near the floor behind the toilet where we could turn the water on and off. I don’t think every house is like that. The old home owner put on off knobs under the sinks, in a closet for the bathtub water supply and as I just said behind the toilet. Maybe he had lot of plumbing problems in the past? Or maybe he was just a very smart man making it easier to fix things and still have water in the rest of the house?
Well it wasn’t the little knob – that hadn’t been touched and it was in the on position. Chris thought maybe it was the pump thing in the toilet and he thought he might be able to get a replacement part the next day.
At that point I remembered that we were watering our garden using a sprinkler. I asked Chris to shut off the water outside so we could see what happened. He refused at first saying no way – the water is still coming out of the taps and the tub, it can’t be low water pressure.
Well … it turns out I was right. I eventually convinced him to go outside, turn off the sprinkler and see what happened and as soon as the outside water was off the toilet started filling.
That had never happened before. Maybe some neighbors were watering as well the last time one of us flushed that toilet and it just didn’t have enough water pressure to fill the water tank?
We do have low water pressure in this area. I hate it!
That’s bizarre. Maybe the toilet is on a separate line than the rest of the bathroom (and on the same line as the sprinklers)?
How frustrating! Do you have a whole house water filtration system installed? Some of these do not have water pressure settings; however, the higher quality ones will allow higher water pressures. This would be irritating when wanting to use outside water and have working toilets!
oh how annoying there is nothing worse than low water pressure it one of the first things I always check before looking at anywhere new… turn on the taps to check the water pressure. get me some funny looks but beats havin a rubbish shower