Fixing a Toilet Fill Valve

Ever had a toilet that wouldn't stop filling? You know... it runs and runs and runs and just doesn't stop? Well, if you have, you know that it is probably being caused by one of two things: The piece that plugs the tank (aka the "flapper") or the floaty thing that tells it when it's full (aka the "fill valve"). The dilemma is, what do you do when you find out that it needs to be fixed?

A few months ago, I had to change the flapper on our downstairs toilet. That's the easy one. You simply turn off the water, flush the toilet and have at it once it's empty. "Having at it" in this case is basically snapping the old one off and snapping the new one in place. You may end up with a little blue toilet water on your hands, but it's easy.

In the past two weeks, though, we've found that the fill valve has been inconsistent. Sometimes the toilet simply does it's thing, and sometimes it has been running and running basically wasting a ton of water down the overflow pipe. Since I'm the primary user of the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, I've been noticing the tell-tale sound of running water from time to time and I've tried to fix it by adjusting the height of the float. Well, as you might have guessed, that finally stopped working. So today I found myself picking up a $6.48 Toilet Fill Valve from Home Depot.

I "read" (okay... mostly they are diagrams--some of which made NO sense at all) through the instructions and it looked easy enough, so I turned off the water, flushed the toilet and started the job of replacement. Turns out it was pretty easy. There's a "hand tightened" nut on the bottom of the valve which attaches it to the water supply, and--at the same time--seals the bottom of the toilet tank so it doesn't leak out. Open and shut case... errr... tank... right?

Well... It wasn't quite that easy...

You see, I found out the hard way that the water shut-off didn't actually completely shut off the water. Of course I found this out when water started pouring out onto the floor while I undid the coupling. The water being clear, not blue, meant that it was clean new water. So no nasty blue dye, but water pretty much going everywhere. With more turns of the shut-off offering no more help, I went to work. 

Yep. There was a constant running of water as I frantically removed the coupling, pulled out the old fill valve, twisted the new valve into place and breathed a sigh of relief as the water stopped running out onto the floor, and started going into the toilet tank, instead.  (Thank god that I was in a bathroom, sitting on the floor next to a shelf filled with towels!)

But I'm happy to say that here I am... 5 hours later... and the toilet has been quiet the whole time. The towels (and my pants) have gone through the washer and dryer. And I can now add "emergency plumber" to the list of things I've done during my unemployment. 

You might even say I'm "flushed" with pride.