What You Should Know About Toilet Plumbing and Repairs
The toilet in your home is perhaps one of the most underrated of all your plumbing fixtures, but when it’s not working the way it should, it’s something that can have a significant impact on you and your family. While there are a few things you might be able to repair on your own, some toilet repair or replacement jobs are best left to the professional plumbers.
Understanding Your Toilet
Most toilets installed in homes have two components: the tank and the bowl. Inside the tank, you find a chain connecting the handle to the flapper valve. When you push the handle it allows water from the tank to flow through the flush valve and into the toilet bowl, forcing the wastewater in the toilet bowl through the trap and into the main drain. The flapper valve automatically closes once the tank is empty, and the tank refills until the float ball reaches a certain point indicating the tank is full.
Simple Toilet Repairs You Can Do
The toilet in your home is not necessarily a complex fixture, which means there are definitely some things you would be able to troubleshoot and fix on your own. The most common is a “running” toilet where you can hear the constant sound of water filling in the tank or a steady drip inside the toilet. It could be related to four things:
- Flapper issues
- Fill valve issues
- Flush valve issues
- Flush level assembly problems
You can often discover the source of the problem by removing the lid from the tank and flushing a couple of times to watch the process. If you are unsure about what might be causing it, call a plumber to help.
Toilet Repairs that Require a Professional
One of the most common issues that most homeowners have with toilets is the presence of water on the bathroom floor. A plumbing professional can check to see if it looks like a leak from the tank or toilet itself using colored testing tablets and repair or replace it accordingly. They can also determine if you have wastewater seeping up from the sewer line, which could be an issue with the seal of your toilet and the floor or a problem with a backed-up sewage line.
Another problem that you should call a professional plumber for is a clogged toilet. If the clog is the result of something in the toilet that should not have been there (and if you have a toddler in your house you know how often this can happen), it could be a more complex process and require the use of specialized plumbing tools to remove it safely.
Replacing your toilet is also a difficult task, and one that must be done correctly to prevent problems later down the line, so you should always call a plumber to help in this situation.
DIY plumbing repairs can be done on occasion, but in most cases it’s beneficial to hire a Utah plumber to help you get it done right.