Hi all - hopefully a plumber or someone with straightforward common sense could help me here!

You know when you flush the loo, the ball-cock thingy falls and then as it rises to the appropriate level the water stops running.

Well yesterday i noticed that it was just running all the time - not flooding but running so I took the top off the cistern and looked.

Inside is the ball-cock, the chain thing thats attached to the handle that shuts off when the appropriate level is reached and a pipe that goes into another pipe where the water comes through. So I fiddled with it for a bit and now the water is just gushing out of this pipe and i've had to turn the silver water stop tap off or it will just keep filling and filling.

Its ok as when I need to "go"! i just turn the water back on and then off when its filled. Does anyone know what the problem might be or is this a call-a-guy-in job

PS sorry i'm a bird!

I'm not a plumber and only have a little bit of straight-forward common sense

When your ball-cock thingie rises as the cistern fills, it should then shut off the tap wot fills it up. It's obviously not shutting that off, and after fiddling with it, the shut-off valve thingie is probably completely broken now or the seal has snapped or something - see, dead technical me.

It won't be a major fix - probably a $1 peice of plastic that can fitted by a nice man for about $30 an hour plus call-out. Do you know anyone 'handy' ?

Good luck - and at least it's not blocked and backing up poo into your basement like our loo did

This kinda stuff really helps with my diet as i now have NO appetite whatsoever

Check the connection at the top of the cistern and the ball cock, if this is split there may not be enough pressure to shut off the water flow. Also check the flapper at the bottom of the tank, if this is worn, water may be seeping through and so the water will continue to run.

Our flatter often stuck and didnt reseat properly after flushing and didnt stop refilling until we manually reseated it, that may be your problem. OH has replaced flapper with new one and now works beautifully

Can't offer any advice, just some sympathy.

Broke the handle of our toilet and wondering if i can handle putting in a new one (no pun intended). OH of course is on a boat down in the Gulf of Mexico for a month - why do these things ALWAYS happen when he's away! It would take him 2 minutes to fix, I see me being at it all day. He says it's easy, I have my doubts.

Good luck anyway.

That sounds as though it may be the case re the flapper - will go to crappy tire tomorrow and get one (after checking for splits in pipes too)

Thanks guys you rock

With our toilets there's a metal clip on the float stem which allows you to adjust the level where the valve turns on and off; I had to do that last year because it would keep running well after the flow of water should have stopped.

From your description it sounds like you have a different design to ours, but there may be some similar means of adjusting it.

Have no idea what a float stem is but it sounds technical (rofl) theres a tube that goes from the cistern into the actual bowl - in this tube is a plastic bendy tube that the water run through and this is the tube that water is gushing from. Don't know what stops the water coming from there but am going to try the plastic stopper thing as per above suggestion

Well, I'm not sure whether 'float stem' is the correct technical term, but it's the metal rod that goes from the float to the valve .

I think the pipe you're talking about is the one that fills the bowl while the valve is open.

Yep thats the one - and gushes like anything

Sounds like the refill valve is stuck open. Replacements are readily available at home centers and plumbing stores.

For more information about loos than you ever wanted to know, check out Toiletology and Terry Love's site.

HI MMC,
hopefully your trip to Crappy Tire has solved the problem - but here's the benefit of my non-technical experience anyway in case it helps...

We had a toilet that kept on intermittently filling up - we didn't really notice during the day with all the noise in the house, but at night you'd hear the water running through the pipes as though to refill the cistern after a flush. I (eventually, after a lot of trial and error) diagnosed the problem to a bit of grit on the bottom of the cistern where the rubber sealing ring for the flapper valve sat - so a slow trickle of water was dribbling into the toilet bowl and eventually the ball float dropped enough to trigger the inlet valve. Cleaning and re-seating the flapper sorted it out.

If yours is filling but not overflowing, the water must be going somewhere... if you lift the ball float arm manually, does the water stop flowing from the inlet valve? If that's the case, the problem is with the flapper thingy. If lifting the float manually doesn't shut the water off, the problem's with the inlet valve. Either is easy to fix once you've worked out where the problem lies.

hth

Great potential for thread drift with this one.

Oak's post is right on. However, if possible go to a Home Depot place (if they exist where you are) instead of Crappy Tire. In my experience the HD staff are really helpful in making sure you get exactly what you need and in explaining how to do the fix.

Good luck,

Novo

I wouldn't even bother trying to fix the existing assembly. New ones are not expensive and the job is piss easy, as it were.