The Possessed Toilet

Regular visitors to the Organic Baby Farm know that my pettest pet peeve is anything that should be explainable, but for some equally-inexplicable reason isn't. The latest thing that's pissing me off (ha) is my toilet, which flushes itself at regular intervals.

OK, so it's not a complete flush. But I'll just be sitting there, alone in the house with the baby or trying to sleep, and the water flow will just turn on all by itself, run for a few seconds exactly like it does at the end of a flush, and shut itself off.

It bothers me to no end. When I was a kid, I had nightmares about a tape player that wouldn't stop playing no matter what button I pushed. I had a possessed microwave once that flashed 6666 (or maybe it was 8888) in the display and turned on all by itself. I'm also deathly afraid of water and plumbing leaks, and so a possessed toilet is like two of my worst nightmares put together.

A couple of nights ago I had a dream wherein an avuncular, white-haired man explained to me that the problem in the toilet was that the float was sticking on the way up, and the sudden flushes came from the float becoming unstuck. That made me feel better, but when I tried to explain the dream to my husband, I didn't see how it could be right.

We have one of those mechanisms with a cylindrical float that surrounds the pipe on the left which has a diaphragm valve at the top. So if any OBF readers have theories as to what demon is possessing my toilet, PLEASE leave them in the comments. This HAS to have a simple, scientific explanation.