Home ownership seems to largely consist of triaging the effects of endless entropy, and maybe occasionally squeezing in some time and/or money for improvements.
This in particular is an activity that I do sporadically and so will capture information to both try to establish more of a framework and also to keep tabs on things over time.
Toilets seem to need some fairly frequent attention based on my limited experience.
The toilet in my downstairs bathroom will regularly run and needs its handle jiggled. I think at some point the chain got disconnected and I may not have reconnected it properly (or things just stretched a bit). In any case the running is caused by the flapper getting tangled in the chain and so the length of the chain likely needs to be adjusted.
Tue Jul 23 03:01:59 PM EDT 2024 I’d originally thought that the connection would allow for adjusting the number of links, but I must have been thinking of some connection somewhere else (maybe another toilet). The chain is connected by a hook where the length of the chain does not appear to be readily adjustable…and while it almost certainly is in one way or another I’ll defer going that route. To start there are two eyes on the arm into which the hook could be placed and I’ve switched the hook from the one that is further from the lever to the inner one.
Fri Aug 2 07:51:39 AM EDT 2024 It still occasionally runs - one quirk with this toilet is that the valve for the pipe is right up against the toilet itself so it has to be pushed to be turned. I don’t think the water itself was turned on all the way which could presumably inhibit sealing so I opened that. The flapper also has multiple places at which the chain could be attached so that will be my next variable to explore.
Mon Aug 19 01:12:37 PM EDT 2024 Not surprisingly, turning up the water didn’t help (that would be a very fragile solution). I removed the flapper and reattached the chain to the outermost option (where it was on the innermost), and reattached the other end to the outer eye of the handle lever.
Wed Sep 11 09:07:43 AM EDT 2024 The toilet continues to run sporadically. My current hypothesis is that this can be resolved by adjusting the sheath around the chain - the running is typically caused by the chain getting snagged (such as one of the flapper hooks) and the sheath should prevent that. There are two segments where the upper segment seems to be a tighter fit and therefore does not move as easily whereas the bottom seems to slide fairly freely. My next adjustment is therefore to slide the top section down on top of the bottom (it had been at the top of the chain) which can hopefully hold it in place and therefore keep the part of the chain that gets snagged under that sheath. If it continues to slide I’ll likely add something like a safety pin through the chain right above the sheath to prevent it from moving.
Fri Sep 27 07:58:48 AM EDT 2024 Sliding the top sheath addressed the previous behavior…but in the ongoing arms race the gap between the two segments of the sheath is positioned so that it consistently catches on another part of the mechanism. This at least results in a more easily resolved and obvious running, but it still needs periodic jiggling. I therefore picked up some waterproof duck tape to wrap around the two segments and cover the gap…let’s see what other tricks this toilet has up its pipe.
Thu Oct 3 08:33:21 AM EDT 2024 Unfortunately after a little while the toilet was once again running and looking inside the tank, the tape was gone so it must have come loose and been subsequently been flushed out of the tank (and unfortunately to the sewer or stuck somewhere in a pipe). This may have been due to poor application of the tape as I tried to do it without removing the chain and therefore there was not much tape used and not much for it to adhere to (the tape should likely be mostly wrapped around to stick to itself). My most recent approach is a simpler one, where the issue is that the gap between the sleeves is getting caught on the overflow pipe so I’ve tried shifting the refill clip towards where the chain was catching which could be enough to block it from getting caught.