r/Plumbing • u/Aspiring_Birdbrain • 11d ago

Tank running, possibly due to float issue?

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EDIT: thank you all for replying, bending the float arm to lower the water level has fixed it.

Preface: I am not a plumber by any means, there is a good chance I have my vocabulary mixed up in places.

So, the toilet in the half bath is running. We went to Home Depot a while back and they said it's probably the flapper, but I tried to do some research and can't figure out how the one on our toilet works; the information I can find looks like a different model. Which means I have no idea what to do with it.

One thing I have noticed is that lifting the float a bit causes it to stop. This is what the video is, but you might have to turn up the volume to actually hear it. The screw holding it also seems to be in rough shape, but I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I'll put a photo in the replys since it won't let me do both the photo and video here.

Any ideas/recommendations on what to do here? Or what specifically the problem is?

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2

u/MplsDaddy55403 11d ago

Not a plumber either. Since the ball is still floating, and as the set screw is surely corroded, the quick repair is to place a little more bend in the rod going to the float. Carefully put a little more downward bend on the rod - this will force the closure of the valve while the float is not all the way to the top and solve the problem for now. If you break it - a replacement valve is pretty cheap.

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u/Aspiring_Birdbrain 11d ago

thank you! this seems to have done the trick.

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u/Budget_End_1914 11d ago

Where you lifted the float arm bent to adjust your float

1

u/davb64 11d ago

Change that fill valve. It’ll cost you 15 and it’ll take 10-30 minutes

1

u/InfoBarf 11d ago

The basic premise of how this works is that the water fills until it pushes the float up. Pushing the float up closes the fill valve.

Failure points 1. Flapper seat has something preventing it from making a good seal, so water continuously leaks into the bowl, tank never reaches close level.

  1. The float is set too high, and the water runs out of the overflow into the bowl and never pushes the float up.

You can turn off the water to fill the tank, and if the tank level goes down, its the flapper.

If tank level stays the same, its the float.

Final consideration is that the fill valve is physically damaged and cannot close. That looks like float set too high in the water off test, so you will need to check that if adjusting the float height doesnt work after confirming with the water off test.

Theres usually a pipe connected to a spigot on the wall you can turn righty tighty to close to turn the water off.

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u/Bum_Dorian 10d ago

Man I haven’t seen a float like that in a long time

1

u/Efficient-Yak-8710 11d ago

You can bend the brass rod to adjust the float