TOILET REPAIR ON THE IDES OF MARCH
March 16, 2006
by: jovial_cynic
by: jovial_cynic
If Shakespearean history is any predictor, my recent toilet-repair adventure should have ended in some sort of midnight disaster. There are tons of warning notes all over the installation instructions of the new toilet valve repair kit, warning me of cracking the ceramic tank and bowl, as well as this ominous message in bold about "potential flooding." Scary. But so far, everything is fine. No flooding.
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the water in my guest bathroom toilet was constantly running. I tinkered around with it to see if I could figure out what was wrong, but nothing seemed to work. I ran to my local Home Depot to look for some kind of repair kit, and found a complete toilet repair set for just under $20. It's the Fluidmaster 43WAK Complete Repair Kit with Whisper Fill Valve(TM).
Since this is the first time I've ever taken a toilet apart, I figured I'd take some pictures and document my journey.
First things first. The inside of my toilet tank looked like just about everybody else's toilet tank: black float ball with corroded arm attached to a plastic tall thing covered in toilet-tank-gunk; worn-out rubber flapper; scuzzy ring around the inside of the tank; and things floating around in the water. mmm boy delicious. I started taking things apart before I thought to take a picture, but this is the inside of the tank with just the flush valve attached, minus the rubber flapper.
Taking everything out of the tank was fairly simple. Removing the fill valve (the part that's normally on the left) requires disconnecting the water line going into the toilet. There's a plastic coupler that has to be twisted off, and that's the only thing holding the fill valve on. The flush valve (the one that's connected to the flapper) can only be removed by pulling the tank off of the bowl -- that requires pulling some nuts off the bolts. I guess newer toilets use wing-nuts instead of your regular hex nuts. My toilet is old, so I had to try to wrench off the hex nuts with no success. Fortunately, the top of the bolts can be turned with a screw driver, and I was able to loosen the nuts that way and then just turn them by hand.
The bottom of the tank is shown here, with the flush valve sticking out. Unscrewing the bottom of the flush valve was an interesting task -- I don't have a wrench that can open up to 4 inches, and it was too tight to turn by hand. I ended up getting a C-clamp and after struggling with it for a few minutes, I managed to turn it and pull it off.
Installing the new parts was simple -- everything just went on the way the old stuff came off. The instructions are very clear that when you tighten parts, you MUST tighten them by hand, or you'll crack the ceramic. As a side note, the flush valve tube was made too tall for my tank, so I had to use a hacksaw to cut it down to size. After that, it went in just fine.
Here's a picture of the water filling up the tank for the first time with the new guts installed.
And here's the first flush.
A few weeks ago, I noticed that the water in my guest bathroom toilet was constantly running. I tinkered around with it to see if I could figure out what was wrong, but nothing seemed to work. I ran to my local Home Depot to look for some kind of repair kit, and found a complete toilet repair set for just under $20. It's the Fluidmaster 43WAK Complete Repair Kit with Whisper Fill Valve(TM).
Since this is the first time I've ever taken a toilet apart, I figured I'd take some pictures and document my journey.
First things first. The inside of my toilet tank looked like just about everybody else's toilet tank: black float ball with corroded arm attached to a plastic tall thing covered in toilet-tank-gunk; worn-out rubber flapper; scuzzy ring around the inside of the tank; and things floating around in the water. mmm boy delicious. I started taking things apart before I thought to take a picture, but this is the inside of the tank with just the flush valve attached, minus the rubber flapper.
Taking everything out of the tank was fairly simple. Removing the fill valve (the part that's normally on the left) requires disconnecting the water line going into the toilet. There's a plastic coupler that has to be twisted off, and that's the only thing holding the fill valve on. The flush valve (the one that's connected to the flapper) can only be removed by pulling the tank off of the bowl -- that requires pulling some nuts off the bolts. I guess newer toilets use wing-nuts instead of your regular hex nuts. My toilet is old, so I had to try to wrench off the hex nuts with no success. Fortunately, the top of the bolts can be turned with a screw driver, and I was able to loosen the nuts that way and then just turn them by hand.
The bottom of the tank is shown here, with the flush valve sticking out. Unscrewing the bottom of the flush valve was an interesting task -- I don't have a wrench that can open up to 4 inches, and it was too tight to turn by hand. I ended up getting a C-clamp and after struggling with it for a few minutes, I managed to turn it and pull it off.
Installing the new parts was simple -- everything just went on the way the old stuff came off. The instructions are very clear that when you tighten parts, you MUST tighten them by hand, or you'll crack the ceramic. As a side note, the flush valve tube was made too tall for my tank, so I had to use a hacksaw to cut it down to size. After that, it went in just fine.
Here's a picture of the water filling up the tank for the first time with the new guts installed.
And here's the first flush.
