Tim Dowling rigs permanent fix for chain‑pull toilet amid January blues

Tim Dowling says he had an epiphany at home while repairing his high‑mounted, chain‑pull toilet cistern during a bleak January.

Earlier in the month he and his wife had been arguing about the start date of Dry January and he described the month as having a prodigious capacity to disappoint. After a dog walk he discovered the staggered bin collection had caught him out and found the fridge full of food with sell‑by dates from either side of Twelfth Night.

Faced with a cistern whose chain mechanism relies on a single rivet that falls into the cistern on average every 40 days, he climbed a ladder, put his arm into cistern water and realised he could thread a length of stout galvanised wire through the rivet. He says he found the wire, bent both ends with pliers so the rivet cannot work loose and called it a permanent solution, while his wife remained pragmatic about the ongoing realities such as the bins.

Key Topics

Culture, Tim Dowling, Dry January, Toilet Cistern, Galvanised Wire, Bin Collection