Can you hear that? It’s the sound of water running in the toilet tank, who hasn’t laid bed at night, listening to the sound of water running. Hi, I am David Lupberger with servicemagic.com, and in this video we are going to talk about how to change the fill valve for toilets that continue to run. We are doing this for two reasons. One, it’s annoying. Two, it’s costing you money. Let’s go ahead and do it now.
So here are the elements that came in a standard Fill Valve Kit that we picked up in a home improvement store, and the wrench did not come with the Fill Valve Kit but I got that because most of this is hand tightened, but overtime these things can tighten up. So I use the wrench when I need to loosen the existing fill valve when we remove it.
The first step in the process is to shut the water off to the toilet you are working on. If your house is at least 15 years old or newer, there should be separate shut off valve to every sinking faucet in the house. If your house is older, you may actually have to shut the water off to the house. Now, that the water is shut off, we will put the pan here once we disconnect. Before I do that, I want to drain as much water as possible out of that tank. So when I do disconnect the water supply line, I am taking out as little as possible and then I can then work in the tank and not get additional water on the floor.
Next, I am going to unscrew, and I can do this by hand. In most cases you saw that pair of pliers just incase I needed them, but this is all usually done by hand tightening, so you can loose it by hand. You will see the water starting to come out. I am going to get that supply line out of the way. Then there is one more bolt holding the actual fill valve in place and I am going to go ahead and loosen that, and unscrew that. The next step is to open up your tank so we can pull out that fill valve. There you see, in some cases every bathroom is different, this is a shelf here. It is a little inconvenient but every bathroom is going to be different. So I'm going to come down here and there is an overflow tube, I am going to disconnect and I can now pull out the existing fill valve, and I have my pot positioned here so it’s catching any remaining water.
The next step is to remove the flapper valve. What is the flapper valve? That is what actually holds the water in the tank, so I'm going to disconnect the flapper, hold it up, and you will there is a little connection here on the actual handle. Some taking off the older flapper and that is just water and rubber, rubbing off on my fingers. We are replacing the flapper valve because you can see what happens overtime is the rubber deteriorates. It’s frayed here on the edges and you can see it just deteriorating so it’s time to put on a new one in its place that can last for another 10 years.
On the flapper you can see that this little hook connects to the actual toilet handle. It’s only about 5 inches so I went ahead and moved this little hook on my new flapper so I can put it back and match what was in the old one so that I know it will work.
I snapped the new flapper valve in place, I am going to take my little hook and put it back right where the old one was. Now that I know when it is flushed, it’s going to operate the same way as the old one.
So now we are going to look at installing the actual fill tube. What I want to do is show that the kit comes with appropriate adapters and connecting nuts. So what I'm going to do here is, and this is all reviewed in your instructions. Just put on the appropriate washers, so and this goes into the tank there is a washer and I will be using this to tighten it from below. Then I will be attaching the water supply to the bottom of this.
I am going to take the fill tube, put it into the tank and slide my overflow valve onto the overflow tube. And now, I am going to firmly hand tighten the lock nut to the base of the fill valve. You don’t want to tighten this too tight because it is made up of plastic and you don’t want it to break. Now I have attached the coupler knot from the supply line and once again and hand tightening until it’s good and firm. Once again, please do not over tighten this because you may end up breaking the assembly.
So the fill valve is now been installed with the overflow, so lets go ahead and test our work by turning the water back on to the commode. I want to make sure that there are no leaks and the toilet runs not only silently but runs efficiently.
The toilet tank is full, there are no leaks and best of all there is no sound. Our repair has been successful. Now if you need a little bit more water flow there is some simple adjustments that the instructions in your kit will tell how to do, but in this point in time, I can put the cover back on and let you know that we fixed this running toilet. Once again, we’ve achieved what we have wanted, silence.
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