Plumbing Repairs Toilets 1 – How to Fix a Clogged Toilet
The perennial problem of a clogged toilet, happens to all of us. What do you mean when you say a toilet is clogged?
The indication of a clogged toilet is when water level comes up higher than normal after each flushing. In this case the water was rising almost to the bottom of the rim. Water levels should never be as high as that.
So, what is the cure?
The first choice of a plumber would be, to use a plunger to free up any obstruction/ blockage down below in the drain pipe. What kind of plunger should you use? Basically the best tool is a plain old-fashioned plunger. We’re looking for a rubber plunger with a solid wooden handle.
There are others on the market that are plastic, and look more like an accordion. We don’t recommend those. Similarly, we don’t recommend the plunger type that just has an the orange cup.
This preferred plunger type is kind of a dual-purpose tool. You could use it for a sink, a bathroom sink, a kitchen sink, etc. But if this attachment is visible, when you pull this part out, that’s for a toilet bowl.
So, we have a good plunger. Now, what we want to do is insert our plunger into the toiletin the correct way.
Stand up. You want to be right over the top of the toilet bowl.
The action to take is to push down first. The plunger works when you pull it back, not by pushing it down. You want to pull back strongly, this will help to clear the obstruction.
Push down, draw back. Push down again, and pull back. Now you’ll see the water start to go down rapidly. That means that the job is done.
Give the toilet a test by flushing it again.
Tip: It’s really good idea to have a plastic bag handy nearby while you do this. When finished take the plunger, put it in the plastic bag, and you’re not going to carry the water dripping all over the house.
There you are you now know about one of the most frequent plumbing repairs to toilets, and you’ll soon be an expert on how to fix a clogged & Leaky Toilets, because that’s all it takes to clear a toilet in 90% of the jobs we do.
As found on Youtube
Plumbing Repairs Toilets 2 – How to Fix a Leaky Toilet
I’m talking to you today about plumbing and specifically how to fix a leaky toilet.
Okay a few tools you’re going to need for yourself: First of all you’re going to need a pair of pliers, an open-end wrench, a screwdriver, and something to scrape with, because we’re going to be scraping some wax seal, and you may also need a chisel.
Alright, now we’re going to shut the water off. What we want to do is shut-off valve the water supply to the toilet flush cistern first. It is here. We want to turn it to the right, right is tight, and closes-off the flow.
Now we’re going to pop the caps off the base of the toilet. Basically you need to take the blade of the screwdriver and you just try to turn it so that it pops up.
Now we’re going to back the nuts off that hold the toilet to the flange. We have an adjustment wrench, we’re going to take this nut, we’re going to back it off, couple of turns, you want to take these off and when you have done that, to set these to the side.
Alright, so just for the sake of the safety benefit of a lighter thing to lift, I move the tank cover and I set this aside. That way, I don’t need to lift this as well, when I lift the toilet up off the floor.
Next thing I want to do, is take the water out of the bowl, and you can do it a couple of different ways. You can take a sponge, and empty it into a bucket, you can use one of our bilge-pumps that they have for small boats. Now we’re going to lift the toilet up off the flange, and we’re going to set it down on the floor.
Make sure you have something to set the toilet down on, like a big old beach towel that you don’t ever want to see again.
Lifting is something you need to be really careful of, this is a very awkward object despite the fact that it is not that heavy.
Now you can see, that I’ve straddled the toilet, getting my whole body over the centre of it.
I’m standing over the toilet, I’m in the centre of it, I’m going to get it straight then I’m going to rock it back and forth a little bit, then I’m going to lift it straight up.
Now I go backwards, onto my rag.
Alright,all done. Now we’re going to scrape the wax off the bottom of the toilet, and I’m going to scrape the wax off the flange.
Scrape it right off, and drop it onto a paper towel. Now we’re going to put new wax on the flange.
Okay so what I have here is a wax doughnut, we use them to set toilets, they come sealed in a package.
So you want to put wax on top, and you want to mold it a little bit into shape, so that it fits the surface, and because this is already at room temperature it’s a lot more pliable to use. Now I’m going to take the bolts that come through the floor and make sure they’re aiming straight up.
So now we’re going to re-set the toilet, and we want to get the toilet as close to our work as we can without dragging it across the floor, so be really careful about that.
Let it compress all the way down to the floor. We want to give it a little bit of movement, nice and solid.
Next, we snap on this plastic decorative cap so you don’t see the hardware.
Alright, that’s done. The last step is to test the repaired leaky toilet by flushing it once again. Here we go, we’re going to connect the water back from the supply to the tank.
Put it on the fill-valve nut, give it half a turn, that should be enough. Now we flush and test it and there should be no leaks this time. If so, and the floor remains dry, that means that the job is done.
As found on Youtube
