Troubleshooting Common Toilet Problems

By Scott Rodgers

Your toilet can suffer from different kinds of problem. To understand all those problems, you must know the basic working of a toilet. The only thing that most of us know about the toilet is the way of flushing the waste using the handle. But you need to know much more in order to have better understanding.

Normally toilets need a tank, a bowl, a handle, a trip lever, ball-cock, a stopper and flush-valve assembly for its basic working. Problem in any of the component can cause improper working of toilet flush or other problems in toilet.

The handle of your toilet is connected to a trip lever. When you press down the handle, it raises a chain or vertical rod that is attached to a stopper located at the bottom of the tank. When the stopper is raised, water in the tank runs through the flush valve. After that the water travels into the toilet bowl through small flush ports.

In all this, gravity plays a major role as due to gravitational force only water goes into bowl and then into the drainpipe. Generally, in a single flush the water present in tank finishes out. After the tank gets emptied, stopper again sets back to its flush valve seat and float ball goes at the bottom of the tank and tank start filling again.

When water comes to the toilet, water level rises. With the rise in the water level, float ball also rises. Once the float ball reaches a certain height it turns off the flow of water to the bowl. In case of some problem, the water may not stop from running. This water is then redirected from the tank to the overflow tube and then into the toilet bowl. Such toilets are referred as a running toilet.

Running toilet is one of the most common problems with toilets. However, there could be several different causes for it and you first need to figure out the main source of problem. Most of the times, the cause is a float arm that is not rising to the proper height. It can be simply resolved by bending the float arm downward.

In case the cause is not float arm then you can check your stopper. Your stopper may not be able to set properly against the flush valve seat. You can simply replace or clean the stopper and repair the flush-valve seat to solve your problem.

Besides running toilet, other common problems are associated with a cracked overflow tube and defective ball-cock valves. To solve such problems, you should prefer to replace them. Also you should replace your old ball-cock device with a new one that contains the newer anti-siphon feature. In some cases, changing individual parts is more costly and time consuming than replacing the entire assembly. - 30517

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here