Time it actually took me: about 2 hours... Read on to see why it took me so long.
It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Last time we called a plumber, it cost an arm and a leg. I only have one of each left, so I thought I'd better start learning to do it myself. Here we go...
First, I had to figure out what was wrong. That was easy enough. It was broken. The water from the tank was dripping from the cover onto the floor. I opened up the tank to take a peek inside, and stupidly flushed the toilet to see what was going on.
WOOOWEEE! I received a nice cold wake up call from the fill valve. Maybe a gasket or a washer was not working anymore, 'cuz it was squirting throught the sides of the top.
Which one is the fill valve? If there's a floating ball attached to it, it's the fill valve. Some newer mechanisms don't have the tank ball anymore. I just replaced mine with a fill valve that has a floaty thing that's attached to the shaft.
See that blue cap with the float ball attached to it?The water squirts out the sides and top when I flush.
This is the one I have now, It's the Fluidmaster Whisper Fill Valve with Leak Sentry:
I picked it up at Home Depot for about $12.00. There are actually two kinds offered there, this one has a leak preventing feature that prevents the tank from refilling when there is a tank leak. You can still flush, but you'll have to push the flusher twice to have the tank refill.
The other one is a basic model without the Leak Sentry.
The instructions were easy to follow, with pretty decent pics. It's a very doable job for a beginner. I basically had no problems with installation. The hard part was adjusting the special leak preventer. It took me over an hour of fine tuning to get it to work properly. But after it was finished, I told everyone in my family, including grandma and my BIL that I had fixed the toilet myself. :) Pat myself on the back!
Total savings: $60.00
1 comment:
Got the exact same problem. Awesome post. Thank u.
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