A leaking toilet can be very frustrating. You can see the water running slowly from the tank into the bowl. If you have already replaced the flapper, now what?
The answer is to move downward. If the flapper is new and properly seating against the flush valve, check to make sure the rim of the flush valve is smooth and not pitted. If it has bumps around it, water will sneak through and drain into the bowl causing it to phantom flush. If it feels rough, you can install a “flusher fixer”. This is a new flapper assembly with a gel ring on the bottom to fill in any pitted areas.
The next step would be replacing the flush valve and finally the tank. Remove the tank and check it for small cracks. If you see any, buy a new tank and install it. Otherwise replace the flush valve. This is done by turning the tank upside down and loosening the spud nut. Once the nut has been removed, the flush valve will lift out of the top of the tank. Make sure you reseat the new flush valve with washer into the hole and compress it by tightening the spud nut. The spud washer goes over the nut and the tank goes back onto the bowl with new bolts, washers, and nuts.
Have you ever flushed the toilet and the water level in the bowl starts to rise? Instead of flushing the contents down, the level in the bowl starts to rise. What to do?
There are a couple of quick things you can do to prevent the water from going over the edge of the bowl. First things first, stop the water from running. You can turn the water supply valve clockwise to shut the water off. However, these sometimes will leak themselves, although they will generally shut the water off to the toilet.
In the event you have a manibloc system and don’t have a water shut off valve at the wall behind the toilet, you can lift off the lid of the toilet tank, and lift up on the fill valve. This will also stop the water from entering the bowl. Realize though, that the water will only stop running for as long as you lift the fill valve. Generally, the water will slowly recede to the point where you can lower the fill valve so the tank refills.
The root of the cause is that the toilet is clogged. There are a variety of ways to unclog a toilet. Here is an article on how to unclog a toilet.
When you flush the toilet does it seem to take forever to refill? There could be several reasons for this.
The most obvious is that you may have a large tank that empties with each flushing, and it simply takes a long time to refill the tank with that much water. This isn’t the case most of the time though.
Try opening the water supply valve fully. It may be that the valve isn’t letting much water through and it simply takes a long time for the small amount of water to fill a large tank. Turn the valve’s handle counter-clockwise until it stops…this may fix it.
Next, turn the valve off and remove the water supply line from the bottom of the tank. Point the supply line into a bucket and turn the water back on. You want to see a good strong flow of water. If the water if flowing well, replace the fill valve inside the toilet. We are looking to exclude possible causes here, and if there is a strong flow of water from the supply line, then it can only be that the fill valve is clogged or bad. If the water flow into the bucket is poor, it may be that the angle valve is clogged or bad. Replacing the angle valve would be the next step and should solve your problem.
So you push the toilet handle and nothing happens, except that the handle goes down…and probably stays down. This is the hallmark of a broken toilet flapper chain.
So, lets get serious here. A new flapper costs about $5.00 and takes 30 seconds to install. It’s an easy job. However, when the chain breaks, and you don’t have time to run and get a new one, you can do a redneck repair (no offense to rednecks). If the chain pulls out of the rubber flapper, really your only choice is to reach down into the water (don’t worry, it’s clean) and lift up the flapper. If the chain has corroded and broken in the middle of the chain, grab a paperclip and reconnect the broken ends. This will buy you enough time to get to the store and replace it. Be aware, the paperclip will corrode quickly, so if you don’t replace the flapper soon, you will at least be replacing the paperclip soon.
When you get the replacement flapper, pull it off of the ears on the flush valve tube, and disconnect the chain at the handle. Replace it just like you removed it. You will have to play with the length of the chain to get a good flush so that the flapper stays up the right amount of time.
You flush the toilet and it runs and runs until it finally shuts off. Assuming the flapper doesn’t get caught on something, I would check a few simple things first.
Refilling the toilet tank is about volume of water getting into the tank. Again, we are assuming the flapper is seated and not allowing any water to flow out of the tank as the tank refills. I would first check the angle stop. Follow the hose or tube that comes out of the bottom of the tank and goes to the wall. You want to make sure it is fully opened. Turn the handle counter-clockwise. If it doesn’t move, the valve is likely fully opened. If it does move, your problem is likely solved. By opening the valve, you will allow more water into the tank and it will fill faster and shut off earlier. Not that you are wasting water, but rather the water is simply filling the tank faster than before.
If the valve was already fully opened, turn the water off and remove the supply line from the bottom of the toilet tank. Point it in a bucket and turn the water back on. Do you have strong pressure? If you do, replace the toilet fill valve. If the pressure is weak, replace the angle stop as the valve may be defective.
A loose toilet paper holder can be frustrating. If one of the arms becomes loose, the roller won’t stay in place and the paper roll will fall. You can tell when this happens because often someone will just jam the paper roll onto the end of one of the arms.
If you look at the very bottom of each of the arms, you will see a small hole. Inside this hole is a setscrew. The setscrews have a point on the end of them that pushes behind a mounting bracket. As the screw tip works behind the bracket, the force pulls the arm toward the wall and holds it. So by tightening this screw, it will hold the arm tighter to the bracket.
However, if the bracket is loose, you will never get the arm tight. For this you can back the setscrew out to access the bracket. You can try to tighten the bracket, but you may need to add larger screw or wall anchor.
Once you have the bracket tight, you can place the arm over the bracket and re-tighten it. Then just put the paper roll back on.
Removing the toilet to install new ceramic tile is always a good idea. It creates more work now, but will save you plenty of aggravation down the road.
True, you will need to remove the toilet and then buy a new wax ring and bolts. However, when you are done with the floor, it won’t look amateur. Plus, you won’t have to make a bunch of round cuts on the ceramic tile to fit around the base of the toilet. By removing the toilet, you can tile right up to the flange and the cuts won’t need to be perfect as this area will be hidden by the toilet anyway.
How will it save you time in the future? At some point you will want to replace the toilet with a new one. Maybe it’s outdated. Maybe it uses way too much water, or maybe you just want a different design. When you replace it, the big concern will be finding a new toilet with the same footprint as your old toilet. That may be tough. Tiling up to the base of the original toilet is not very attractive anyway, as there is a gap between the tile and the toilet. Can you imagine how ugly the new smaller toilet will look with an even larger gap? Do yourself a favor now and remove the toilet before you tile the floor.
A realtor asked me to come look at a toilet problem in a property he had listed. He is very hands-on and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. When I showed up he explained that the home inspector said that there was a problem in between the tank and the bowl, because when he flushed the toilet, water was leaking at this area.
Isolating the problem, with whatever is broken, is always the best coarse of action. Without knowing what the problem is, how can you fix it? So if the problem occurs when the toilet flushes, you can isolate this by not allowing the toilet to refill during this test.
I simply held the fill valve up simulating a full tank, and hence no water would run. But you could also turn off the angle stop at the rear of the toilet at the wall. So with the water off, flush the toilet and watch what happens. In this case, the toilet flushed fine with no leaks whatsoever. That eliminated the cause of the leak being the connection between the tank and the bowl.
The next thing to do is to allow the water to run. I simply removed my finger from the fill valve float allowing it to drop down and start refilling the tank. You could also turn the water back on to the angle stop, if you turned it off to isolate the flush. As soon as I removed my finger and the water started flowing, the leak was very obvious. Water was shooting out of the top of the fill valve that was cracked. What was happening was the water was spraying out soaking the underside of the tank lid and finally running over the rear of the tank where it finally dripped off of the toilet bowl on to the floor. Replacing the fill valve fixed the problem.
A loose toilet seat is a real pain. It makes anyone apprehensive to use it for fear of it sliding off of the bowl. Fortunately it is an easy fix.
A toilet seat attaches through 2 holes at the rear of the bowl. It is held on to the bowl with plastic parts. There are basically two methods of securing a seat to the toilet bowl.
If you look behind the toilet seat, you will see two covers. These covers will either pop up, to expose a screw head, or twist to the side. In the event your style twists to the side, you might notice that one or both have twisted and this is why it may be loose. This style allows for quick removal for cleaning. If that is the case, simply twist the covers back in place and the seat should be steady. If not, check behind and under the bowl to make sure the plastic parts are secure.
The other style is simply held in place with a plastic bolt and nut. By lifting the cover, you will see the plastic screw head. The plastic nut that clamps the seat to the bowl is under the bowl just in front of the tank. It’s probably easiest to grab the nut with a wrench from below and tighten the screw head from above. After you tighten each screw head, snap the caps back down to cover them.
If you are having a problem getting water to the toilet, it is a matter of troubleshooting the problem with the simplest items first and moving backwards.
First make sure that other fixtures are receiving water. If they are, then make sure that the angle stop is opened (turn it counter-clockwise). Remove the lid to the toilet and toggle the fill valve or ballcock (whichever style you have).
I would start with removing the water supply line to the fill valve. Turn the angle stop off (rotate handle clockwise) and disconnect the supply line from the fill valve. Point it in a bucket and slowly turn on the angle stop. If you get water flowing from the supply line, you need to replace the toilet fill valve. If you don’t get water from the supply line, you probably have a problem with the angle stop. It is usually the case that the angle stop has failed and it needs to be replaced. The other possibility is that there is some type of blockage in the pipe before the angle valve, which in not very common.
At this point you will need to turn off the water to the house to replace the angle valve. If you want to be sure, you can connect a piece of tubing with a hose clamp to the end of the pipe and run it into a bucket. Then turn the water back on and see if you get water flowing into the bucket.