Toilet Repair: Almost Nothing That Goes Wrong Is the Toilet

A toilet is a piece of glazed ceramic with no moving parts, bolted to a tank containing two that move constantly. That is why most repairs are parts, and why the ones that are not are worth knowing about.

Short version

A toilet is two parts that fail and one fixture that rarely does. The flapper and the fill valve account for most faults, both are inexpensive parts, and food coloring in the tank tells them apart in ten minutes without any tools.

Tank and Bowl is a referral service, not a contractor. We connect homeowners with independent contractors. Contractors are required to hold whatever credential their state or municipality demands. Every state page sets out who licenses plumbers there and where to check, so you can confirm before work begins. We carry out no work, we sell no fixtures, we do not set prices, and we never charge homeowners anything — the contractors in our network pay us when we route them a call.

The four faults

A tank that runs is the flapper or the fill valve, and EPA publishes a ten-minute test with food coloring that tells you which. A handle that does nothing is usually a chain. A flush that needs two goes is the water level, the chain, or a fixture that was made badly. Water on the floor is four possibilities and one of them is condensation.

Source: US EPA WaterSense, Fix a Leak Week.

The one that is not about convenience

A toilet that rocks when you sit on it is working the seal underneath it, and that seal is the only thing between the drain and your floor. It is the fault people live with longest and the one that does structural damage.

Why the age of the fixture matters

EPA states that the Energy Policy Act of 1992 set the maximum flush volume for tank-type toilets at 1.6 gallons, and puts pre-standard models at 3.5 to more than 5.0 gallons. Toilets are nearly 30 percent of a home’s indoor water use — more than anything else inside the building.

So on an old fixture, what it costs to run belongs in the repair-or-replace arithmetic, and usually gets left out.

Source: US EPA WaterSense, tank-type toilet supporting statement; US EPA WaterSense, Residential Toilets.

And who is actually paying

Across the 57,927,284 occupied homes we cover, 62% are owner-occupied. For everyone else the toilet is part of the property and the repair is normally the landlord’s. We say so rather than sell to people who cannot buy.

If the dye test pointed at the flapper, that is a part, not a fixture.Worth saying on the call, because it changes what somebody arrives with. We connect you to a contractor covering your area and you are never charged. Toilets head this site, but any plumbing job is welcome.

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