melev

For the past month, my toilet has been driving me nuts. I replaced the refill mechanism, but once it was full, over the next 5 to 10 minutes it would drain about 1.5" of water, and refill. The only solution to not wasting water was to shut off the water line going to the toilet. Then when it was time to use it again, open the valve, wait for it to fill up, and proceed - then close it down again. It was very very annoying.

I bought a new flapper from Home Depot, but that didn't fix the problem. Then at Walmart I found five other types of flappers, including one that had a new plastic seal that putties to the old drain to assure it will not leak. Everything I tried didn't work. I talked to a plumber, and he told me the problem was the riser vent tube (the one next to the flapper) and said it was probably cracked. Never heard of that one before. There was no water on the floor, and I never heard any dripping of any kind in or out of the toilet.

Last Saturday, I couldn't take it any more. I purchased all new guts for my toilet, from the ground up. New wax ring, new bolts, new drain system with those bolts, new cut off valve to sweat on the copper pipe poking out of the wall, and a new braided flexible pipe from that valve to the tank. I was going to replace everything and solve this once and for all. I know it was overkill, but each part was needed:

1) replacement cut off valve uses a simple quarter turn to turn the water on and off - No more twisting it 10 times one way or the other.
2) replacement wax ring - years ago, the plumbing backed up in my home and water came out from under the toilet! That shouldn't happen again now.
3) replacement riser - solve the leak, right?!
4) toilet rocked a little - got some plastic shims

So yes, my toilet finally brought me to my knees for a couple of hours while I completely disassembled the old and rebuilt it with all new parts. Everything was reinstalled, and I was pleased. I turned on the water to the house, and the new sweated-fitting didn't leak. The toilet filled up, looked good and I put all the tools away. A few minutes later, I heard the toilet refilling again!!! Disgusted, I turned the valve one quarter turn (ah, so easy) and walked away.

For the evening, I thought about what was going on and how was it possible that it continued to always leak the exact same amount. All new parts ruled out any leaks, so it had to be mechanical. It took me a while to figure it out, but finally I did. With my guess in mind, I lifted the lid and looked inside the riser tube to measure the water level in the tank in relation to the small black tube that rinses the bowl during a flush cycle. And what did I find? They matched.

Back to the basics of plumbing, I realized what was happening was a slow siphon even though the black tube wasn't submerged in water. It was a gravity drip, essentially. Scissors in hand, I cut off the offending piece of tubing, affixed the shorter length to the supplied plastic nipple on the riser, and solved the problem.

Yes, that means all the other stuff I did to make the toilet tank new again was unnecessary. This stupid tube was the problem the whole time.

So why am I typing all this out? Because I hope to help all of you avert the same issue when your toilet needs to be repaired. The store told me if the $32 in parts didn't fix it, I'd have to buy a whole new toilet. That's about $100 or more, usually. When all it needed was the rinse tube cut to the proper length. Just poking it down the pipe is not acceptable, apparently.