Spelunking in NoCal

Mark has found a new hobby - spelunking. Now I'm sure you have this image in your mind of mysterious caves with incredible formations of stalagtites and stalagmites and dripping water..... but in NoCal, we spelunk a bit differently.... We do it in our toilet. In the South Bay, the water is VERY hard. So hard that when you pop open the soap dispenser in the dishwasher, you will find a stony crust around the edges. And the underside of the sink faucets have a stony beige-and-grey crust on them that you have to CHIP off to remove. When we got here, the toilet did not flush very well.... well? It barely flushed at all. And you had such a cute burbly symphony of water sounds as it feebly tried to empty. There was a ??stain in the very bottom that would not go away with the normal toilet brush scrubbing and cleaners. And with TWO Virgos in the house, THIS WOULD NOT DO!! So Mark began to investigate. First, we tried the store solution that was made for slow toilets..... nothing after half a bottle. Then we tried a Lime-Away-type product to open up the drain..... a BIT better. But still not the powerful gush with a flush that Mark was looking for. So he began to do research on the computer..... after hours (well, maybe not HOURS), he discovered that mineral deposits were building up in the toilet. So he took the toilet OFF the seal on the floor and tried to remove the deposits...... with a BIT more luck. So now we had a better gush-and-flush, but you had to hold the handle down for a LONG time to get it to do this. So back to the computer for more research. And then Mark discovered the answer......COCA COLA. We bought a liter of it and some white vinegar and Mark got to work..... He also found out that the little hole in the very bottom of the bowl (you will never see it unless you can fit your head into the little space and look back towards the front of the toilet) has to SQUIRT water into the bowl to get the syphon going or something like that.... To be honest, I wasn't paying too close attention to the physics of toilet flushing because I was so intrigued with Mark's animated VISUAL display of how it was supposed to work (hands waving and whooshing and pointing and flushing... you get the picture). And then Mark said he needed a mirror so he could SEE the small holes UNDER the rim of the toilet (Did you even KNOW that there were holes there??). The only mirror I could find was in a compact of blush... so I reluctantly gave it to him (wet toilet blush.....). He got his spelunking equipment together - QTips, white vinegar, coat hanger, mirror - and entered into the dark........ I left. Well, the bathroom IS small and this kind of spelunking is best done alone. A while later, he emerged, damp and grinning. "Well honey. Want to see it flush?" So we both eagerly stood shoulder to shoulder (the only way we can both fit in the bathroom) around the bowl as Mark pushed the handle........ and GUSH!!! The water raced out of the space in the bottom and disappeared to..... who-knows-where. Mark was grinning from ear to ear. "You should see all the gunk I chipped out!" he proudly announced. Thank Heavens I was spared this view. Then he said that he wanted to "tighten up" the handle a bit so it wouldn't have as much play in it ( a playful toilet handle is a bad thing I guess). I went into the office to pay bills and soon heard a quiet "Oh Damn". Yes, the playful handle parts had playfully broken. So we had to ask Garmin Nuvi (remember? She/he has a GPS brain?) to find us a hardware store open on Sunday that sold toilet tank repair parts...... To make a long story a bit shorter, the new parts also broke. But the determined engineer I live with was not giving up. Using a coat hanger, he jury rigged the lever inside the toilet and got it to work. So now our toilet GUSHES and flushes and you only have to hold the handle down for a FEW seconds to get it to work. Progress!