Have you spoken to NFU Mutual yet Womble ?!
Why? Do they do exorcisms?
I took the cistern to bits today to figure out what parts I needed, and realised that it was only rust and luck holding everything together
. So, given that the old toilet didn't have the best of flushes anyway, rather than chase an uncertain problem around, I decided just to replace the whole thing.
Once I'd got the old one outside, I put a hose up the soil pipe outlet to see what would happen, and yes, water did indeed come out of the cistern inlet, bypassing the bowl. I have no idea if that's by design, or due to an internal hole in the porcelain somewhere, but it was definitely happening, and may also explain why the flush was so poor.
Of course this is a smallholding story, so we can't possibly end things there, can we!? Because I've been doing so much flushing over the past couple of days, our septic tank overfilled and overflowed. Yes, you've guessed it - it was totally blocked and backed up.
I suppose normally it was still passing just enough water to cope, but me flushing the loo 20 or 30 times whilst scratching my head was just too much for it to cope with!
I dug down until I found the outlet of the septic tank and soon there was an ominous gurgle which gave me just enough warning to jump out of the hole before it filled with
! Honestly, what a way to end a decade!