Toilet Troubleshooting

I noticed that sometimes our downstairs toilet would overfill the tank, wasting water down the overflow drain. I tried lubricating the valve itself, but that seemed to have little effect. Rather than waste too much time trying to fix it, I just went ahead and bought a new fill-valve kit.

Installing it really isn't too difficult. The first time I installed the new valve, I kept a plastic pan nearby to catch the last inch or so of water from the tank. This didn't catch 100%, but it was pretty good. The second time I pulled out the valve I sucked the water out with a shop vac, and it was much drier. First I disabled the supply (thankfully we have the nice quarter-turn supply valves, then disconnect the supply. Then I took the nut loose from the underside of the tank.

Once that was done I pulled out the old fill valve, and installed the new one. The new Universal Fill Valve is height adjustable, and I got the height wrong initially (and had to remove and reinstall the new fill valve).  There's a cavity in the toilet tank lid, so the fill valve can sit higher than the rim of the tank. I did the previous steps in reverse order. Then I reattached the bowl fill tube.





At the end of the repair I noticed that the tank-to-bowl bolts were leaking a bit, so I had to run out and buy a tank-to-bowl gasket/bolt kit. At that end of it I was only about $4 short of the complete repair kit, so my advice is: if some part starts acting up, just buy and install a whole-system repair kit. That way you'll have a few years free from toilet troubles, rather than fixing a new problem every few months.

Parts List:
Fill Valve (HD)
Tank-to-bowl kit (Lowes)

Should have bought:
Complete toilet kit (HD)