I had this issue before

When I lean over there is a tendency for the contents of my shirt pocket to fall out.

In the past this movement has cost me dearly. Did I learn nooooooooo.

When I was early in my speech therapy career, there were no computers to keep track of schedules. I was always looking for a way to track my schedule with my students and their projects. I was also adverse to wearing a watch at that time.

I bought a calculator that was really state of the art. I allowed for alpha numberic (keyboarding) and it had a watch built into it. It was the size of a checkbook. It had a cut out on the front that allowed the digital time to be read. I thought that it was really cool stuff.  I paid 54 dollars for it.. quite a sum in the late 80's.  I used it extensively to do"work" related functions.

One night while I was baking a cake I leaned over to check the cake in the oven. It went surfing out of my pocket and on to the burners at the bottom of the oven. It ignited immediately and sent a foul burning rubber electrical smell throughout the house. Eventually I opened the oven after it cooled and through out the cake, the calculator datebook and replaced the oven burner that had melted plastic all over it.  I was pretty sad.. but nothing could be done but try to figure out a better way to tack info.


Fast forward to today.

The toilet in the new bathroom suddenly did not flush. Instead all I heard was the tale tail continuous water running down the drain. Just like most guys that see an issue in their car mechanics, they throw open the hood even if they cannot or have no experience in the area, and peer bent over at the mechanics of hard to understand equipment. I did the same to the this fancy (10 years ago innovative) toilet. It had the idea of pressure charging the bowl contents down the sewage line rather than use gravity to feed the lines. At one time they flushed 8 golf balls down the line at once, with a similar flushmate device.

I leaned over and sure enough, my iphone dropped out of my pocket and down under the pressure chamber unreachable by even adept human hands. All of the water in the tank is contained in the pressure chamber and not in the tank.. so the iphone did not go swimming it was just inaccessible.

I read the owners manual on line and determined that I would have to disassemble the toilet from the base and drag apart seals and still I would have a toilet that needed parts to fix.. via online order only.

I called the local plumber that was listed as the contact for Sloan flushmate. He said that his billing charge was 89 dollars an hour. It would take a couple hours he figured to split the toilet apart and fish out the errant phone. He said that they were recommending moving out of flushmates since there were toilets that accomplished the same thing (water conservation) without such complicated assemblies and backordered parts. He offered a low water 17 inch tall (taller than our current) for 495 installed. He said that if I wanted to go shopping for another that they would install it at the 89 dollar an hour rate. Quick at math.. I decided to have them bring the 17 incher in an hour and have them install it.

I rep arrived within 30 minutes and hauled the old one out and turned in on its side.. easily fishing out my fully functioning iphone and he proceeded to install a 17 inch tall (ADA compliant) 1.2 gallon Gerber toilet. He leveled it out and shimmed it in place. all parts were installed and he calked it and checked for leaks several times.. We were good to go! 

So watch out when you lean over with stuff in your pocket!

: ) Pat