Toilet Water Keep Running

housebuyer143

tristanjourney said:

Hi all,

I noticed that the toilet is keep running. I checked a few Youtube videos but unfortunately none of those videos seem have the same setup as my toilet.

In the last few days, I can kind of fix the water flowing issue by pushing the flush button a few more times and the toilet water will stop flowing. But from today, the trick not work anymore. I opened the toilet up and found the problem might be that the refilled water level is too high. When the water is fully refilled, a small amount of water will just continuously flowing into the toilet.

I've uploaded the picture of the toilet in case that helps (sorry about the gross water build up and mould inside - I just moved in this property and not sure how old the toilet is).

Pictures:

Had the same problem last year and this is one of those things the water board might fix for free. They did mine. 
Call them and ask..I saw a post on Facebook for my water board and told to report the leak in my house and they sent a plumber who installed a new part for free.

chris_n

If it is leaking past the flush valve you will hear the cistern filling up occasionally when the toilet hasn't been used. If it isn't filling up occasionally it is the fill valve that is causing the problem.

tristanjourney

tightauldgit said:

If you take the top off the cistern and the water level is low then that suggests the flush valve isn't reseating properly (usually by build up of limescale or other gunk) and the water is flowing into the bowl instead of staying in the cistern. If the cistern is overfilled then that suggests your inlet valve isn't shutting off properly (probably due to a build up of limescale or gunk) so water keeps flowing in. Are you in a hard water area? Limescale kills these things pretty quick.

If they're not too bad then sometimes you can get a temporary fix by just pushing them up and down manually a few times to clear away anything that's sticking them.  

Long term solution is replace them - they're cheap. Difficulty level depends on the setup of your toilet and cistern and how easy it is to get access to the fittings. Yours looks not too bad as it appears  to be a totally separate cistern and a side entry inlet. I'd say it's a DIY job for someone semi competent (can you turn the water inlet off and use a spanner?) or £100 for a plumber.

Depending on what flush valve you have if you can find the exact same one sometimes you don't even need to replace the fittings but can just switch out the valve body for a new one.  

Sorry for starting off this very old thread again after a few months. 

Yes, we live in a hard water area.

Back in April, I called a plumber who solved the problem by replacing the inlet valve. It worked for 2.5 months until today the problem occur again.

I think this time is it is inlet valve again. My observation is that the water keeps flowing in the cistern even the inlet valve is lifted up by the water. The water keeps flowing in until it exceed the water level of the other valve and the toilet starts to keep flushing.

Are there better alternative flushing mechanism that deal with hard water better? I wonder how the people in hard water deal with this. I suspect that even if I change the inlet valve again it will stop working again in a few month's time.

I've attached a picture of how the inside of the cistern looks like.