Leaking or Running Toilet

postvr8 · Joined: 27 May 2006 Posts: 18 Location: SLC, UT

The toilet in my master bath leaks a little, you can hear water draining when it's real quiet. Do I need to replace all of the guts of the toilet or just certain seals? A friend of mine once spent $.99 on replacement seals for his toilet, woke up the next morning to a flooded house, including basement, $10,000 in damage. Also, when the sprinklers kick on in the middle of the night, this causes the same toilet to turn on, the tank fills up for just a second and then stops. What's up with that? Thanks, positive rate.

sf340dvr · Joined: 05 Jul 2005 Posts: 57 Location: Appleton, WI

The leak could be at any of the seals on the bottoms of the tank, but this is not typical and is indicated by standing water on the floor on or around your toilet.

You can test for any other leak to the bowl by putting a bunch of food coloring or one of those bright blue toilet cleaner pucks in the tank, and waiting to see if the bowl water gets tinted without flushing it. You can also tell that you have a slow leak from the flush valve or overflow tube if there are any red streaks on the sides of the bowl. These streaks are caused by mineral deposits from a constant stream of water.

The leak could be from a hole or crack in the overflow tube. Turn of the water to the toilet and drain the tank by flushing it. Check the condition of the tube. Since these tubes are made of plastic and last forever, it is highly unlikely that this is the cause.

The leak could be from a bad shutoff valve. These could get worn, or go bad from mineral or chemical (if you use in-tank toilet cleaners) deposits.

The leak could be from bad adjustment of the float. If it is not close enough to the shutoff valve, then it won't travel far enough to shut off the water as the tank refills. Though this would have had to happen since day one and came from the factory this way. Highly unlikely! Though this is what typically causes the leaks, but it's not from the float position it's from the water not rising far enough because of a leak somewhere else!

The most common leak is at the flush valve. This is the rubber valve that opens when you flush you toilet that releases the water in the tank to the bowl.

The leak could be caused by a couple of things related to the flush valve:

A worn flush (flapper) valve. This is very easy and cheap to replace, just make sure you bring the old one with you to the hardware store, because there are several types.
Flush chain is too long or short. If the chain is too long it can get caught under the valve when it closes after a flush. If it is too short the flush valve won't close or seat all the way. This is easy to fix, and free! Additionally, some flush valves have a small float attached to the chain to keep it out of the way when it's closing, and this float might not be positioned correctly or missing! I had this problem myself.
A foreign object restricting the valve seat. Just clean it off in this case.

Here is a link that has some good detail on fixing your problem!
http://www.toiletology.com/howtofix.shtml

B200Driver · Joined: 29 May 2006 Posts: 26 Location: Douglasville, GA

I didn't want to be accused of giving "crappy" advice, so I passed on this one.... Pun intended......

postvr8 · Joined: 27 May 2006 Posts: 18 Location: SLC, UT

I ended up replacing everything in the toilet with 'premium' parts, the 'float' is a laser... pretty high tech, the whole kit cost me $20 and it works great. The toilet doesn't kick on when the sprinklers come on either.

fernando torres · Joined: 26 Dec 2011 Posts: 4

These are very helpful discussions here for us and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, its fantastic to read.

	Handyman xChange Forum Index -> Bathrooms	All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1