Toilet valves that do NOT leak?

On 6/10/2013 9:03 PM, Ignoramus4900 wrote: ...

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What's the supply water pressure? If too high that can cause the issue.

What leaks is the valve that is between the tank and the toilet.

The flapper valve.

Is it's seat clean/smooth. Also, the vertical overflow tube assy could have a crack in it, allowing water to bypass the flapper valve all together.

Check this:

Erik

One other thing to be careful about is that your chain is not getting kinked or the handle sticking and keeping the flapper slightly unseated. My chlorine tablets sometimes (once a year?) get lodged in there, too.

Yup, the flapper. I've had pretty good luck with the soft rubber flappers that are red with a stainless wire chain. I've gotten them at the local Ace hardware. They seem to last about 10 years in a pretty busy house (8 people for a number of years, now down to 7).

One thing to check is that there isn't calcium build-up in the tank. The stuff forms "rocks" in the bottom of the tank and these can chew up the flapper, or even the metal fitting at the bottom of the tank. Once the metal seat for the flapper is chewed up, no flapper will seal well.

Jon

You chlorinate toilet flush water?

Are you sure that the water is going through the valve and not siphoning through the bowl refill tube? If the end of that tube is below the water level when the tank is full, then water will siphon out through the refill tube. The fix is to cut the tube so that the end is _above_ the full tank water level.

We used to do that years ago. It did help prevent bowl staining due to hard water. But it also caused the flapper valves (2 different toilets) to develop ripples around the thin sealing edge. Tried several brands, they all did the same thing after about a year. Gave up on the chlorine tablets and after that the flappers have lasted for

Those tablets ate away the tank-to-bowl mounting bolts in my mother-in-laws upstairs guest bathroom. When the bolt heads disintegrated, the water leakage took out the ceiling in the downstairs entry hall. I found similar corrosion in her other two toilets. A sticker inside each tank specifically warned NOT to use any sort of cleaning tablet in the tank.

Larry Kraus fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Not for nothin', Larry, but one is supposed to LOOK in the tank occasionally. Maintenance has merits.

I know... most Americans today couldn't maintain a wad of Play-Doh, but still...

SINCE this is a machining group... an enterprising machinist could make use of some teflon for the seat and a polished hollow stainless steel ball to make a 'permanent' flapper in the schema of the old rod-and-ball seals. Flappers are only flexible so they don't have to be made to precision to seal.

Me? Shit... JUST the flapper can be had for $4.00. It takes two minutes to install. I just use the chlorine tabs, and (um...) _maintain_ the systems.

LLoyd

Kristian Ukkonen fired this volley in news:KfKtt.20168$ snipped-for-privacy@uutiset.elisa.fi:

That only contributes a little. The real story is the loss of plasticizers in the rubbery 'stuff' they make the flappers from.

Most are PVC or vinyl-based rubbers, and as the plasticizers slowly dissolve in the water, they get stiff.

LLoyd

Depends.. In my case, I'm pretty confident the inlet filter solved the problems.

Before that, cleaning the stuff from the valves made them to work for a few months/years. For cleaning, acetic acid seemed to be a good chemical - much easier cleaning than with soap water. Take apart, clean parts in acetic acid (10-20%) with brush, wash with water, assemble again. It made the rubber/plastic parts really clean easily.

Well, *knock* *knock*, I have not had to clean any valve or temperature regulator after installing the inlet filter. In my case I'm pretty confident that was the cure.

OTOH: if you have old black iron water pipes instead of PEX plastic, then the water pipes THEMSELVES are the source of the problem causing stuff. They are filled with rusty stuff, you can't see through an old black iron water pipe. Only easy solution IMHO (in addition to replacing with PEX) is to add 10um filter before each toilet mechanism.. Just my opinion. Easy to try.. I would..

Good one! I'll be commandeering that.

Well, chlorine is a bleach so I suppose it would tend to remove (or bleach) stains inside the tank....

I've used chlorine for decades and have never lost a brass screw to them.

Hmm, now that you mention it, the rubber seals under those very mildly green brass bolts (11 years old) aren't looking so hot. I have spares, so that won't take long. I've only replaced one set of those so far in my lifetime, too.