Leaking toilet is usually easy to fix even for DIY. Typically all one needs to do is to replace the the flushing valve unit. Not for the toilets in my apartment.
Our apartment is a unit in a 50 year old apartment building. The toilet is very old despite looking like new. Being old is not a problem, the problem is that the tank is about 1.5 times as tall as the current version tank. When one toilet start to leak, I could not find a new dual flush valve the same height as the current one. In the end I bought a new version unit. After installation, the flush rods can not even touch the flush buttons on top of the valve.
Instead of uninstall the new flush valve, I replaced one flush rod with a chopstick, to make it work.
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| The needed push rod length is 3 times of the flush rod length |
When a second toilet start to leak, I don't want to replace the flush valve. I just let it slow leak. However, I could not let the toilet keep leaking any more when I could hear the leaking from the toilet!
That's interesting!
I flushed the the toilet, and removed the tank cover - when the tank is filled, no more leak! I repeated this procedure a few times, it worked every time.
I found a fix. But why?
My hypothesis: the flapper valve still seals well, it was not the tear and wear of rubber seal that causes the leak. The leaking is due to the small swell of the valve body - which makes the valve just a tiny bit taller, the flush rods pushes the button on top of the valves just tiny bit, e.g. a thousandth of an inch, which make the flapper leaking.
If this hypothesis is correct, Lily suggested that I can just cut the flush rods slightly shorter instead of moving the tank cover away from its seat after each flush.
Later I thought of an easier solution, I raised the tank cover from its seat using a paper towel folded twice. With this solution, we flush the toilet as usual, no more leak!
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| raised tank cover solved the leaking problem! |
