LeakBird

Last year property management and real estate behemoth CitiApartments purchased my 17-unit-or-so Victorian apartment building, which is kitty-corner to the upper east end of Dolores Park in the Mission in San Francisco. Lately my toilet, which must be from the 80’s (built some 30 years ago, in a time when natural resources seemed infinite), has been frequently running. I put in a repair order with my Landlord, even though I suspect the problem is a decrepit, water-logged refill valve and ragged, flush valve wherein the stopper often doesn’t squarely land and seal itself on the valve seat — a double whammy.

This is especially so if Proposition 8, according to a phone bank activist who called me three days ago, is passed in San Francisco in 2008, which will give the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) the right to raise the tiered water rates in San Francisco, and they will indeed do so. That’s why the activist told me to say “No” to Proposition 8. “The water rates are already expensive,” he said. “According to whom?” I thought. It’s like people who’ve never been to Europe that say gas is expensive. Admittedly, I haven’t been able to find any articles or evidence to back him up or clarify Proposition 8. Anybody know?

Needless to say, I don’t want to be the one to replace my valves, especially since my toilet is ancient, I don’t own my apartment and my time is precious.

In the mean time, since my friend Jordan and I have recently gotten into the whole water conservation movement (and we come by it honestly — he’s a property manager and I’m a business manager involved in sustainability), I thought I would learn something about the myriad ways of running toilet repair, in order to educate myself further about this somewhat insidious, all-too-common problem, which is only now beginning to take a toll on everyone’s bottom line.

After browsing through dozens of running toilet fact sheets, How To’s and various plumbing fixture documents, most of which are next to completely useless, I decided to put together a list of the top five “How To’s” for fixing your running toilet, known by plumbers as a “run-on” plumbing problem, at the end of this document. Unfortunately, none are exhaustive.

This is due primarily to the fact that while all toilets are built on the same principles and fulfill the same three basic functions (flushing, stopping and filling), all toilets are, at the same time, composed of different parts, made by different manufacturers, and are known by different names.

It is true that if you gather information from the top five articles on how to repair running toilets listed at the bottom of this artilce, you’ll have a well-rounded sense of running toilet repair. But do you have time for this?

Rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel, I decided to provide you with a synopsis of the Top Five “How To’s”, contained here, in one document, so that you might be able to quickly try a few things, to stop the leaking, as opposed to wasting more time, water and money while surfing through the multitude of sites each with their own limited scope. Of course, I recommend you refer to them if you need more detail, but I think the following explication will be all you need.

Chances are if you implement some of these methods, you’ll fix your running toilet, and also have the opportunity to (systematically) learn your toilet’s language.

Here then, firstly, are some facts you should know about running toilets, in order that you might be inspired towards action:

• A running toilet poses a severe economic as well as an environmental impact.
• According to the folks at American Leak Detection, a running toilet will easily add $500 to your water bill.
• Since many cities now have tiered or graduated water rates in place, the more water you waste, the higher the rate you pay, and it’s a known fact, that coupled with climate change, growing resource scarcity, and population growth, these rates are only going to get higher in the US. For example, it was shocking news that a small town (Oakland) in Florida is considering imposing a 100-gallon-per-day water limit on each of its citizens. And in August of last year, the Southern Nevada Water Authority study claimed Las Vegas, whose aquifer has recently dried up and which Lake Meade can no longer support, would be out of water as soon as within three years!
• 30 to 40 percent of your average household water usage comes from your toilet (all flushing), and it could be a lot higher than that if you have a running toilet.
• A running toilet can waste anywhere from 2 to 6 gallons a minute. That’s 86,400 to 259,200 gallons per month! And it seems that as much as 90% of complaints to municipal water boards for high water bills can be traced to running toilets.
• In addition, consider the fact that a new low-flow toilet averages 1.6 gallons per flush, and that the waste from a running toilet can be, conservatively speaking, 2 gallons per minute. Should your running toilet run for an hour, it’s equivalent to flushing it 75 times! And if your toilet was built in the 80’s, which many are, then it uses 3.5 gallons per flush, or over twice as much! I don’t know what the correlation is between flushing and running, but I’ll take an educated guess that the older a toilet is, the more water is uses when it flushes and the more water is wastes when it runs.

These numbers considered, here are practical steps you can take:

1. Conduct a tank water level diagnostic. Turn off your water supply, by turning the knob clockwise that’s at the base of your toilet, hanging from the wall. Let it sit for 20 minutes. Then lift your toilet lid off. If the water has been lowering in the tank, your problem is with the flush valve at the base of your tank. If the water stays even, then your problem is with the refill valve.

2. Check to see if water is going down the overflow valve/tube/pipe. This is an upright pipe in your toilet tank, whose tip, as a rule, should be no more than 3/4 inches above the water level. It’s a safety mechanism that siphons clean water to your toilet bowl and then to your sewer, if the water rises above the predetermined limit in your tank due to some malfunctioning, insuring that you’ll never have a flood condition. If you can’t tell for sure if water is flowing down the overflow valve, supposedly you can sprinkle talcum powder in the water and you’ll be able to tell immediately. If water is running down the overflow valve, then your problem has to do with the refill valve floating to the left of the overflow valve. You’re in luck because if you know what this is, you can replace it, repair it, or adjust it. Just observe and you’ll probably be able to tell. Mos likely it’s water-logged, old and decrepit, or both, like mine!

3. Replace or repair the flush valve. Most running toilets can be traced to a faulty flush valve. Flappers can get encrusted. The trap handle can be tightened. Sometimes the stopper at the base of your tank, which is clogging the hole and rests on a valve, can split, or get pock-marked, squishy or distorted. This usually means it’s time for retirement, and any one of these problems can cause you to have a running toilet

4. Call the landlord or the plumber. A typical service call starts at $50, whether it’s you or your Landlord paying for it. This is the second easiest thing to do, after what follows (#5).

5. Jiggle the handle. What you’re actually doing is lifting the lift arm which pulls up the guide rod, chain or lift wire, in turn pulling the stopper out of the flush valve seat. For some reason the flush valve isn’t closing properly, if “jiggling” stops your running toilet. Another similar lazy man’s method (I know from experience!) involves lifting the lid off the tank and pressing down on the refill valve. If it’s water-logged, it sometimes pops back up, as if raising from the dead, and the toilet stops running. (A note for all you landlords and property managers, ignorance is bliss—especially if, like your tenants, you don’t have to foot the water bill). Jiggling the handle means you’re lazy, but don’t worry, you’re not alone!

6. Replace the refill valve (a.k.a conventional ballcock). Sometimes the float rubs against other parts, and the float arm needs to be readjusted sideways. Sometimes the float or refill valve gets water-logged, which means it absolutely needs to be replaced. You can shake it if it lacks buoyancy.

7. Adjust the chain or lift wire. Sometimes the chain (if you don’t have a chain, you have a lift wire) in your toilet gets caught under the side of the stopper, because it’s too long. You need small pliers to loosen the chain. Make sure the toilet handle is in place and the lift handle inside the tank is down. Make the chain just taut, so that it’s not too short and not too long.

8. Use a dye kit or food coloring. Administer drops of coloring into your tank and wait to see if it leaks through to your toilet bowl after a few minutes. If it does, then your running toilet is leaking at the valve seat and flapper, or at the refill valve, and you’ll have to experiment to see which one is causing the problem. Don’t worry, just flush or pull on things, and see what happens. Remember: Learn the language of your toilet. However, if your toilet runs only 85% of the time, and you do your dye test during the 15%, then you’re out of luck. Of course, you’d never know it.

9. Conduct an empty tank diagnostic. Turn you water off before bed, as described in #1, then in the morning, if the water level is an inch deep in the tank, even keel with the valve seat edges, then your stopper or seat is bad. But if the tank is almost entirely empty, with the water level just below the valve seat edges, then it’s a gasket beneath the flush valve that’s bad. Depending on your toilet, you may have to separate the tank from the bowl to get to the gasket.

10. Replace or repair your valve seat gasket. At the bottom of your toilet, you’ll notice a hole where the stopper should squarely rest. In that hole is the valve seat, which contains a gasket made of plastic or brass. If it’s faulty, in other words, no longer forming a seal with the stopper when it should, you’ll need to clean it or observe it for deformation. If it needs to be replaced, you can place a new, self-adhesive seat on top of the old one. As stated above, you may have to remove the tank from the bowl.

Top Five How To’s on Fixing or Repairing Your Running Toilet:
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1. Toiletology: “How to Test a Toilet for Leaks”
2. DoItYourself: “How to Repair a Running Toilet”
3. Tutorials: “Learn 2 Fix a Running Toilet”
4. WikiHow: “Fix a Running Toilet”
5. CornerHardware: “How to Cure a Running Toilet”

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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 by email at ben@leakbird.com

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