Have your ever experienced the problem such as:
You are laying in bed in the middle of the night or you sitting downstairs and you hear your toilet fill up for a second or two, or you get your water bill and you notice it a little higher than it usually is or you physically just hear your toilet leaking through when you come in your bathroom. Then you wander if you should call a plumbing contractor or if the issue is just a simple fix.
There is a simple test you can do. It’s called a dye test for your toilet.
As professionals, we have special dye tablets but you can go to any grocery store and get food coloring, and use any color you want. No the color does not matter.
You start by going to the toilet that you are having the issue with or better yet just check all of your toilets.
You flush the back of the tank and hold down the lever until most of the water is out of the tank.
Once it’s completely drained out as much as you can get, you drop the dye or in your case droplets of food coloring and close the handle and just let it set for 10 or 15 minutes. Better yet let it sit for an extended period of time to ensure there are no leaks, even slow leaks.
Now the water in the tank will turn whatever color dye you put in it, we use blue dye in tablets, so mine will turn blue. ?You do not want that color of dye from the tank getting into the bowl.
After you have waited 15 – 30 minutes or whole days, come back, and lift up the bowl, if there’s no blue or whatever color you used in the bowl, then your flapper is not leaking.
If you lift up the toilet seat and the color that you put in the tank is in the bowl then your flapper is leaking. ?Now you will want to replace the flapper. You can go to the local home improvement store and get a replacement flapper.
Or you can of course contact us by phone at 717-755-5461 or use our contact form to do the dirty work.
Thank you.
For over 60 years we’ve been York County’s Plumbing, Heating, & Cooling specialists. Our team services Wrightsville, York City, Spring Grove, Fairview Township, Shrewsbury & everywhere in between!