The water in my toilet tank ran after each flush. I did a temporary leaking toilet fix by turning off the water to the toilet by turning the knob at the base of the toilet.
The toilet sat with the water turned off for at least 3 months.
The running toilet is in the guest bathroom so it wasn’t a hardship on the family. I just never got around to fixing my leaking toilet until I saw Fix a Leaking Faucet on Green U as part of Cisco’s One Million Acts of Green and Three to Green Contest. It was the kick in the seat I needed to fix that running toilet.
How to Fix a Leaking Toilet
I took the lid off the toilet tank and quickly saw what was causing my toilet to run. The flapper was all whopperjawed because I used to put those bowl cleaning tablets in the toilet tank in between bathroom cleanings. I don't use those tablets anymore.
2. Flush the water out of the toilet tank.
Notice how the warped sides of the flapper do not seal properly. This causes the toilet to run.
4. Cut the replacement flapper valve to fit in the your type of flapper bracket.fitting according to the directions on the packaging or to the type of of my toilet flusher assembly thingy (are these terms getting too technical for you?)
It is just me or does the new toilet flapper kinda look like a little spaceship?
5. Slip the flapper into the flapper bracket.
This bracket has two knobs that slits on the side of the flapper fit onto.
6. Attach the flapper chain to the flusher arm.
My chain has a clip on the end that attaches to flusher arm.
7. Turn the water on to the toilet and let the tank fill up.
8. Do a test flush. Make the flapper chain shorter or longer if needed.
The new toilet flapper
9.You’re done!
This $5.00 fix took about as much time to complete as an Ace of Cakes commercial break and saved me a $50 plumber fee. If I had let the toilet run, I could have wasted over 22,000 gallons of water in one year! Not bad for a quick five dollar fix.
Best of all I was able to mark Fix a Leaking Faucet off my Green U list which was the third act of green I needed to receive one entry in Cisco’s Three to Green Contest. The winner gets a $5,000 shopping spree to BuyGreen.com. Do you realized how many sets of bamboo sheets that will buy?!
You can participate too. All you have to do is register for the contest on One Million Acts of Green or by connect via Facebook and pledge and complete those acts of green.You get one entry in the contest for every three acts of green you complete until October 31, 2010.
What little green tasks have you been putting off until tomorrow?
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Disclosure: Rockfish Interactive, in partnership with Cisco are compensating me for my considerable time on this project. However, my ideas, words, and opinions are my own and are not influenced by this compensation. See what the other ambassadors have to say about One Million Acts of Green: Crunchy Domestic Goddess, Green Your Décor and Green and Clean Mom.
1 comment :
I don't know if I have a "running toilet" - mine seems to flush all by itself hours after it has been used. No hubby around to do this for me, so guess I can try it myself. You make it look simple, so we'll see what happens. Thanks! This was a very informative post, and one I really needed to implement. dmj53(at)hotmail(dot)com
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