The Running Toilet Book: Chapter 2 — The Super Toilet Myth (LeakBird)

Apr.18, 2009 in Running Toilets

I don’t think you can get away with putting your talents in a toilet bowl and not having them flushed away.
Sean Penn

If something can go wrong, it will.
Murphy’s Law

Whether it’s talent, water or cash flows, if they’re in the toilet bowl chances are one hundred percent they’ll get flushed away. And when it comes to any of these precious resources, we need a certain level of management to keep them from being mis-managed or not being managed at all, for that matter.

As a property manager or water manager, it can be said that water and money are your two most precious resources. However, there seems to be a myth that’s fairly prevalent, particularly among property managers. This is the Super Toilet Myth.

The Super Toilet Myth says if we install the ultimate HET (high efficiency toilet), completely outfitted with the greenest, most high quality parts, we won’t have to worry about running toilets.

I once had a conversation with Dana Haasz, the Conservation Administrator for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

“Would you say that 10 percent of all toilets are running to some degree at any given time?” I asked her.

“I’d say it’s probably quite a bit more than that,” she said.

“Well, since you’ve acknowledged this problem, then how do you envision going about addressing it?” I asked.

“Toilets run,” she replied.

Now Ms. Haasz does not endorse the Super Toilet Myth. However, if you visit any of hundreds of how-to websites or talk to any of dozens of property managers, they’ll tell you that the way they deal with running toilets is by installing brand-new flappers, replacing worn-out valves, heck, even by putting in an entire fleet of HETs.

This simply isn’t the way to deal with a running toilet.

If you probe them even further, they’ll admit that they don’t actually have a method of dealing with running toilets. In fact, they simply wait until they receive a high water bill, then respond to the situation in something like the following series of steps:

Receive high water bill
Call water utility or district to enquire about it or to complain
Call all tenants in the building which received the high water bill, to enquire as to whether they’ve had any unusual leaks or behavior with regard to their toilets
Put up a 24-hour notice to enter the said building
Call the building’s plumber to schedule maintenance
Have the plumber enter each and every unit of the building
Have the plumber diagnose the problem and make any needed repairs
Pay the plumber for their time
Pay the high water bill
File for a partial refund from their local utility or water district, if they have such a policy in their municipality

This is the ultimate ad hoc method. We have talked with dozens of property managers and virtually all of them admit to carrying out a version of the above-described approach. Wait and see, they say, wait and see.

And virtually every single one of them admits that a running toilet or two can put them in the red for the entire month with regard to their cash flows. According to American Leak Detection, a running toilet can easily add $500.00 to your water bill, and this doesn’t include associated management and maintenance costs, which we have found almost always end up being around the same amount as the excess water costs for the running toilets.

Not long ago, I was speaking to Joseph Chen of the High Consumption Unit of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

“Would you say that 90 percent of high water bills are due to running toilets?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he replied. “The tenants need to be reminded to conserve water, and the bills need to be constantly monitored.”

Without fail the methods for dealing with running toilets always emphasize what to do after the fact. And even if you install the nicest HET you can get your hands-on, the simple truth is that at some point the chain is going to get caught, or the flapper is going to get worn down by chloramine concentration, or any other combination of known things which can and will occur, simply because toilets run.

The aim of this chapter is to dispel the Super Toilet Myth. There is no super toilet. What we need to focus on is preventative maintenance.

This is where Murphy’s Law comes into play: If something can go wrong, it will.

It’s the same with toilets. By the very nature of which they’re composed, it’s inevitable that at some point they will run, which means cash flows going directly down the drain.

It’s funny, because there are also a lot of great products out there, which claim to address the problem in whole but really more like the Blind Men and the Elephant.

Let me give you a refresher on this wonderful tale. A bunch of blind men touch an elephant in order to describe what it’s like to each other.

“It’s like rope,” says one, describing the tail.

“It’s like a column of stone,” says another, describing a leg.

“It’s like an exotic fan,” says another, describing the ear.

At some point a wise man tells them that they’re all right, because each of them is describing a different aspect of the elephant.

In the same way, some people may recommend a certain flapper, even a flapper-less toilet, stating that your toilet will never run again. Of course, they’re right in that a running toilet is often due to a faulty flapper. But they’re wrong in that a running toilet can also be due to the chain having gotten caught, or the refill valve functioning incorrectly, causing gallons of water to shoot down the overflow valve.

Other people may say, hey, all you need to do is apply the Dye Test once a month, to see if your toilet is running. You merely administer drops of colored dye to your toilet tank, after which you wait a few minutes to see if the color leaks through to your toilet bowl. If it does so, voila, you have a running or leaking toilet. If it doesn’t, you don’t have one.

However, the Dye Test won’t work if water is shooting down your overflow valve, because that means there is no water leaking through to your toilet bowl. Chances are you would have noticed this anyway, when you went to apply the colored dye to the toilet tank.

The Dye Test is also time-consuming and requires a scheduled human element rather than any kind of automatic system.

Another person might recommend that you install an automatic refill prevention tool that will prevent your toilet from refilling in the event of a leak. Of course, this may be a good idea, but it merely means that when your toilet is leaking, it’ll stop working altogether, and then if you’re a handyman (or your tenant is a handyman), then hopefully they can fix it.

Someone else might recommend installing a certain HET. Now I know that these save a lot of water, which is a great thing. But I also know that they’re two or three times as expensive, and that plumbers have a lot of issues with them, such as getting easily clogged. Not to mention they still run or leak.

Just like the Blind Men and the Elephant, everyone is right but each is only addressing one aspect of the running toilet. And who has time or money or expertise to address every aspect of the problem? I can’t speak for you, but I know that I don’t. And from speaking to dozens of property managers and water managers, I know that they’re a little strapped for time too.

So, I hate to break it to you, but there ain’t no Super Toilet that’s gonna save you from a surprise, shocking high water bill.

If you are interested in How You Can Increase Your Cash Flows by $2,500.00 Every Year and Never Pay for High Water Bills Due to Your Tenants’ Running Toilets, sign up for our Free Report here.

Abendigo Reebs is the VP of Business Development for LeakBird Industries LLC in San Francisco, CA. He may be reached at by email at jordan@leakbird.com

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