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The New Flapper
Seasoned FPS readers know I’m useless when it comes to home repair. Here’s my latest saga: For the last few weeks, the water in my toilets have been running. This is particularly bad in drought-stricken California. My reliable handyman has been too busy for a house call. I went on YouTube to see if I could fix it myself. (I couldn’t.) My only workaround was to lift the tank cover and manually press the “flapper” down. Yesterday, the handyman finally came over in, tooled around and told me the toilets were fixed. After he left, they were even worse. In a panic last night, I used duck tape in the tank, which stopped the toilets from continually recycling. Today, a bonafide plumber intervened. He replaced both my flappers (now bright red) and everything’s AOK.
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I have struggled with this too and went through several toilet parts. I’m fairly handy but I’m no plumber either! When I owned a house I bought a book I found that had illustrations and directions for common home repair and maintenence issues. So happy to be a renter again! 🙂
The plumber did the repair in 15 minutes. I love experts!
I SO couldn’t do this basic repair that I had the toilet replaced instead. It was 20 years old (you can check the date of manufacture inside the tank), and it used a lot of water per flush.
The new toilet uses a mere 1.0/gpf!
Now you’ve gotten me curious. I’m going to check the date of mine.
Denver Water (my water company) offered rebates on high efficiency toilets. Maybe your water company does too, if you decide to replace.
Anything over 5 years old is probably using a minimum of 5-6/gpf. Potable water is a resource we can’t afford to waste.
As a resident of a dry state, and a former northern Californian who suffered through the 5-year drought in the 70’s, I’m urging everyone to replace old toilets where feasible.
OK. I will definitely research this.
That’s a very pretty flapper.
Don’t you just love the word!
Yes, love the word. And flappers rule when it comes to having a working toilet!
I knew nothing about flappers a week ago. And now, I’m all in.
Just curious what you did with the duct tape in the water! The problem I have is the chain holding the flapper coming off of the hook holding it. The chain did break off once which meant either no flushing or manually flushing. Luckily I have a second bathroom and the plumber came and fixed it. Gotta love those plumbers.
Both of my bathrooms started malfunctioning at the same time. (I guess that makes sense, given they must have been the same vintage.) Whatever I did with the duct tape, my plumber said it was a VERY BAD idea.